Hello every one, I’m looking in Github for the source code that handles the rendering of geometry in the engine. I’m not familiar with the source code at all.
Also how does Unreal handle rendering and adding materials and shaders to the geometry? Is that source code available?
Thanks for any help.
There’s two ways to get the source code. If you just want to read the code, you can download it in the Epic Games Launcher by selecting Engine Source in the options for the engine version you want to look at.
If you want to make modifications, you can get it through Github. Epic keeps the source code private, so you have to link your epic games id here with your github id. Go to Epic Games and find the link tiltled “linking your github account”.
Once you have the source, you can got to the following directories to learn more:
Render: Engine/Source/Runtime/Renderer
Shaders: Engine/Shaders
You can also search at Unreal Engine 4 Documentation | Unreal Engine Documentation for the answers about what you want to know.
Yes, that source code is available, and it’s obviously a very large set of collaborating subsystems that make it all happen.
If you check out the source code from GitHub, and make the Visual Studio projects, you can then do Find In Files for some kind Direct3D primitive function, such as IASetInputLayout().
Then you can start following callers up through the call chain (and through indirect data structures) to figure out how all the data gets to where it needs to go.
Find-in-all-files on Windows, and “grep -r” on Unix, are your friends when trying to make sense of a new code base! Start with some terms that you know will have to be used (such as the graphics API) and go from there.