- the blog posts describes how APITrace can intercept D3D12 applications (even complex AAA games such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla)
- presents how the layer deals with Persistent Memory Mapping, Capturing and Replaying Descriptors, Fences, and Synchronization
- additional describes what issues are still left unsolved
![](/img/posts/graphics-programming-weekly-158/ac_valhalla_d3dtrace.png)
- the dev vlog explains how the 2D billboard based clouds are implemented
- cloud volumes are generated in Blender, directional light information is baked into textures using single color lights along the principal coordinate system axis
- these directions are blended at runtime to integrate into the in-game PBR lighting system
![](/img/posts/graphics-programming-weekly-158/sapiens_clouds.png)
- the devlog presents a walkthrough of the implementation of a toon shader
- contains a comparison between a toon shading model and a more realistic model
- the implementation is done using the Unity Universal Render Pipeline (URP) and ShaderGraph
![](/img/posts/graphics-programming-weekly-158/toon_shading.png)
- the video tutorial explains how to take an input mesh and use a compute shader to generate additional geometry
- provides an overview of compute shader concepts, showing the HLSL based implementation and how to integrate it into the Unit rendering pipeline
- additional explains how to use DrawIndirect to draw the results directly from the GPU timeline
![](/img/posts/graphics-programming-weekly-158/compute_shaders.png)
- the article presents three different approaches to archive a fire effect using Unity
- show a sprite-based flipbook effect, procedural shape generation for a toon, and more realistic shape
- the implementation is done in ShaderGraph
![](/img/posts/graphics-programming-weekly-158/2d_fire_title_wp.png)
- unrolled Twitter thread presenting an overview of differences between D3D12 and Vulkan
- the aim of the comparison is to be able to support both APIs
![](/img/posts/graphics-programming-weekly-158/vulkan_d3d12.png)
Thanks to Denis Gladkiy for support of this series.
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