GitHub - CeSun/Aura3D: Aura3D is a lightweight, extensible, and high-performance 3D rendering control (original) (raw)

A lightweight, extensible, high-performance 3D rendering control

Demo project: TowerDefense3D — A tower defense game built with Aura3D, showcasing real-world usage of the engine.

Important

The project is under active development. Feedback and suggestions are welcome via Issues.

Overview

Aura3D is an Avalonia-based 3D rendering control built on OpenGL ES 3.0. It provides a complete set of capabilities from model loading, scene management, and lighting/shadows to custom rendering pipelines, suitable for integrating 3D content into .NET desktop applications.

Features

Scene & Models

• Multi-format model loading — Native glTF/GLB support, plus 50+ formats via Assimp extension (FBX, OBJ, 3DS, etc.)
• Built-in geometries — Box, sphere, cylinder, plane
• Scene graph — Hierarchical node tree with parent-child transform inheritance

Lighting & Shadows

• Directional / Point / Spot lights — Three light types with color, attenuation radius, and shadow casting
• CSM cascaded shadows — Automatic cascaded shadow maps for the main directional light, configurable cascade count and split scheme
• Blinn-Phong lighting model — Default forward rendering pipeline
• HDR environment maps — Skybox / ambient background

Animation System

• Skeletal animation — glTF skinning and Assimp-imported external animations
• Animation blend space — 2D blend space for smooth transitions between animations
• Animation graph — Condition-based state machine with blend transitions

Rendering Pipelines

• Replaceable pipelines — Built-in BlinnPhong (realistic) and NoLight (unlit)
• PBR deferred pipeline — Physically-based rendering with Metallic-Roughness workflow
• Cel shading pipeline — Toon shading style
• Custom pipelines — Compose RenderPass freely without dealing with VAO/VBO

Advanced Rendering

• GPU instancing — InstancedMesh for high-performance rendering of thousands of instances
• Hierarchical instancing — InstancedMeshGroup (similar to UE's HISM) with incremental updates and auto-grouping
• Frustum culling — Togglable, greatly reduces invisible draw calls
• Octree spatial index — Auto-expanding octree for efficient spatial queries and culling
• Point cloud — Built-in PointCloudPipeline for high-performance instancing-based point cloud rendering
• Primitive rendering — Triangles, Lines, LineStrip, LineLoop, Points, TriangleStrip, TriangleFan
• Click picking — Scene.Pick / Scene.PickClosest for triangle-precise picking of Mesh and InstancedMesh
• Debug visualization — Built-in debug drawing for bounding boxes, lights, bones, and camera frustums

Platforms

• Avalonia — Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS
• .NET 8+ — Supports .NET 8.0 and .NET 10.0

Quick Start

1. Install

dotnet add package Aura3D.Avalonia dotnet add package Aura3D.Model.GltfLoader

At minimum you need one model loader. Aura3D.Model.GltfLoader handles glTF/GLB. For FBX, OBJ, 3DS and 50+ other formats, also add Aura3D.Model.AssimpLoader.

2. Use in XAML

<Window xmlns:a="https://github.com/CeSun/Aura3D" ...> <a:Aura3DView x:Name="aura3Dview" SceneInitialized="OnSceneInitialized"/>

3. Load a model

public void OnSceneInitialized(object sender, InitializedRoutedEventArgs args) { var view = (Aura3DView)sender; var camera = view.MainCamera;

// Set background color
view.Scene.Background = Texture.CreateFromColor(Color.Gray);

// Load glTF/GLB model
var model = ModelLoader.LoadGlbModel("model.glb");
model.Position = camera.Forward * 3;
view.AddNode(model);

// Add a directional light (required by the default pipeline)
var dl = new DirectionalLight();
dl.RotationDegrees = new Vector3(-30, 0, 0);
dl.LightColor = Color.White;
view.AddNode(dl);

}

See the documentation for more features.

NuGet Packages

License

MIT