The Visual Computing Library is a C++20 modern, multi-platform Mesh and Geometry Processing library.
The library is divided in several modules, each one with a specific purpose:
- Core: contains the basic core library, that is templated header only and contains the basic data structures and algorithms; all the other modules depend on this one.
- External: contains algorithms and data structures that use external libraries, like VCG, etc.
- Processing: contains algorithms for high level mesh and geometry processing tasks that can be used as black boxes plugins.
- Render: contains the rendering library, that allows to render meshes using different rendering engines and different window managers and GUI libraries.
All the modules can be found in the vclib directory, and can be built separately.
By default, the library is built with the Core module only, but you can enable the other modules by setting the VCLIB_BUILD_MODULE_<module> CMake variable to ON.
I designed and developed this library mostly for personal use and to study new features of C++17 and C++20. Most of the features of this library are poorly tested: I maintain the library during my free time.
If you appreciate this work, or you think it could be improved, let me know by opening a thread in the discussion tab! Looking forward for your feedback!
The core module of library is header only, therefore to install it you just need to add the vclib/core/include directory in your
INCLUDE_PATH.
Otherwise, you can use the library by using the cmake command add_subdirectory, by adding the path to this repository
in your cmake project. CMake will create a target called vclib, that you can link using the target_link_libraries command.
VCLib requires recent compiler versions in order to build the newly features of the C++20 language, that have been recently integrated in the major compilers.
VCLib currently builds with the following compilers:
- GCC 11.3 (default in Ubuntu 22.04)
- CLang 16 (default in XCode 15.0 on MacOS)
- MSVC 19.36 (last version in Visual Studio 2022)
There is no guarantee that old compiler versions are capable to build the library.
If you use CMake, the minimum required version is 3.24.
VCLib is designed to work with the most recent features of C++20:
- Concepts
- Ranges and Views
In the future, when CMake will add stable support to C++20 modules, the library will be refactored and will use only modules,
avoiding whenever is possible the usage of #include.
Right now, the library is a work in progress, and therefore is a work in progress also the documentation.
The best way to learn how the library works is to look at the code in the examples, which is built at every commit and therefore it is guaranteed to work.
A first draft of the (not up-to-date) documentation of the library can be found here.
You can build the documentation using doxygen (tested on 1.9.1 version):
doxygen docs/Doxyfile
Be sure to call doxygen from the root directory of the repository, otherwise the paths in the Doxyfile will be wrong.
The output will be placed in the docs/_doxygen/html directory.
The library is under the MPL2 license.