erhe is a C++ library and editor for 3D graphics with a graphics API abstraction loosely modeled after Vulkan and Metal, with backends for OpenGL, Metal and Vulkan. It runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS. The OpenGL backend requires a minimum of OpenGL 4.1; OpenGL 4.6 is recommended.
erhe is the evolution of RenderStack.
The editor is a sandbox application for 3D scene creation and manipulation.
- Multiple 3D viewports with independent camera and rendering settings
- Hierarchical scene graph with node parenting
- glTF import and export
- Scene serialization to JSON with companion binary glTF
- Multi-scene support
- Post-processing pipeline (bloom, tonemapping)
- Shadow mapping
- PBR material system with metallic/roughness workflow
- Material library with preview rendering
- Fly camera -- 6DOF camera navigation with WASD, orbit, tumble, track, zoom
- Selection -- click-to-select with shift/ctrl multi-select, GPU ID buffer or raytrace picking
- Transform gizmo -- translate, rotate, scale with axis/plane constraints and snapping
- Brush placement -- place shapes on surfaces with snap-to-face, rotation, and scale-to-match
- Vertex painting -- paint vertex colors directly on meshes
- Material painting -- assign materials to individual mesh faces
- Physics interaction -- drag, push, and pull rigid bodies in the scene
- Grid -- configurable grid display and snap-to-grid
- Subdivision: Catmull-Clark, sqrt3
- Conway operators: ambo, chamfer, dual, gyro, join, kis, meta, truncate, chamfer/bevel
- CSG / boolean: union, intersection, difference (experimental, via Geogram)
- Utilities: triangulate, normalize, reverse, weld, repair, generate tangents, bake transform
- Full undo/redo for all operations
- Parametric shapes: sphere, box, cone, torus, disc, cylinder
- Brush system with reusable shape templates
- 180+ built-in polyhedra (Platonic solids, Johnson solids, geodesic domes, etc.)
- Procedural scene generation
- glTF 2.0 import and export (via fastgltf)
- Partial support for Wavefront OBJ import
- Headset rendering with OpenXR
- Hand and controller tracking with visualization
- Floating HUD and hotbar UI in VR
- Passthrough support
- Keyboard and mouse with configurable bindings
- SpaceMouse 6DOF input
- OpenXR controllers
- Debug line and text rendering in 3D viewports
- Physics shape visualization
- Render graph visualization window
- Shader hot-reload via shader monitor
- GL state dump to clipboard
- Tracy profiler integration
erhe is organized as a set of independent libraries under src/erhe/. Each has a notes.md with details on purpose, API, and design.
| Library | Description |
|---|---|
erhe::graphics |
Vulkan/Metal-style graphics abstraction: pipelines, buffers, textures, shaders, ring buffers, shader monitor |
erhe::rendergraph |
DAG of render nodes with typed inputs/outputs, executed in dependency order |
erhe::scene |
glTF-like scene graph: nodes, meshes, cameras, lights, animations, skins |
erhe::scene_renderer |
Forward renderer, shadow renderer, ID picking, camera/light/material/joint GPU buffers |
erhe::renderer |
Debug line renderer (compute, geometry shader, or GL_LINES), text renderer, texture blit |
erhe::geometry |
Polygon mesh manipulation via Geogram: subdivision, Conway operators, CSG, shape generators |
erhe::primitive |
Converts geometry meshes to GPU vertex/index buffers; PBR material definitions |
erhe::physics |
Thin abstraction over Jolt physics: rigid bodies, collision shapes, constraints |
erhe::imgui |
Custom ImGui backend with per-host ImGui contexts and window management |
erhe::commands |
Input command system with state machine, priority dispatch, and bindings for all input types |
erhe::window |
SDL / GLFW windowing abstraction with input event handling |
erhe::item |
Base Item (name, id, flags) and Hierarchy (parent/child tree) classes |
erhe::gl |
Generated type-safe OpenGL wrappers with call logging and extension queries |
erhe::log |
spdlog wrappers |
erhe::verify |
VERIFY(condition) and FATAL(format, ...) macros |
erhe::codegen |
Python code generator for C++ structs with versioned JSON serialization via simdjson |
erhe targets OpenGL 4.5 with DSA but includes a runtime compatibility layer for OpenGL 4.1 (the maximum version on macOS). Features like DSA, SSBOs, compute shaders, persistent mapping, and texture views are emulated or gracefully degraded at runtime. See doc/opengl41_compatibility.md for details.
See doc/building.md for build instructions, requirements, and CMake configuration options.
MIT -- see LICENSE.
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