Mastering Graphics Programming With Vulkan: Develop a modern rendering engine featuring GPU-driven rendering, advanced lighting, and ray tracing

Building a modern rendering engine can feel overwhelming when basic Vulkan tutorials only take you so far. This second edition bridges that gap, showing you how production-focused rendering systems manage resources, GPU work submission, geometry, and lighting, while incorporating techniques such as GPU-driven rendering, ray tracing, and ReSTIR GI.

You’ll gain clarity and confidence working with the API thanks to a framework that strips away the boilerplate while preserving Vulkan’s concepts. As you progress, you’ll explore Vulkan features such as descriptor indexing, mesh shaders, and async compute for performance and flexibility. You’ll also use frame graphs to build a rendering architecture designed to scale and simplify resource management. From there, you’ll build GPU-driven rendering that leverages meshlets and GPU-based culling, then move into Vulkan ray tracing for shadows and reflections and implement ReSTIR GI. Finally, you’ll apply differentiable rendering with Slang to create neural materials.

Written by two experienced graphics programmers, this book combines theory with implementation-focused guidance to help you gain practical skills. By the end, you’ll not only understand the Vulkan API at a deeper level but also have the knowledge to design and build your own modern renderer.

© 2026 Packt Publishing (Ebook): 9781806116362

Release date

Ebook: 16 October 2026