host

Command-line tool to send rendering workloads to FPGA.

• Parses 3D scene file formats (.obj, .mtl, .scene)
• Triangulates geometries and creates AABB tree to accelerate spatial queries
• Serializes scene + tree and transmits it to the FPGA via Ethernet
• Saves image returned from FPGA.

Clone with git clone --recursive https://github.com/capstone-team-2023844-fpga-raytracing/host.

Building on Windows

• Install Visual Studio Community 2022 with the following options:
  • Select the "Linux Development with C++" and "Desktop Development with C++" workloads in the installer.
  • If you prefer Clang over Microsoft's C++ compiler, then also select 'C++ Clang Compiler for Windows' and 'MSBuild support for LLVM (clang-cl) toolset' under 'Individual components'.
• Open the source folder in VS, select desired configuration (x64-Debug or x64-Release) and click Build->Build All.
• An executable is created in /out/build/. You can use this from the command line.

Troubleshooting

• See here for any issues with CMake.

Building on Linux/Mac

Install CMake (On MacOS, you can use Homebrew to install CMake). cd into the source directory and run the following:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .

This produces a release build. Change cmake .. to cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug .. if you want a debug build.

Troubleshooting

• You need a compiler with C++20 or C++23 support (gcc version 11 or higher).
• WSL Linux does not work out of the box. This might help.

Running

./rthost --help brings up a list of options:

FPGA raytracer host.
Usage:
  rthost [OPTION...]

  -h, --help                Show usage.
  -i, --in <file>           Scene to render (.scene or binary file).
  -o, --out <file>          Output (.bmp, .png, or binary file).
      --dest <host>,<port>  FPGA network destination. (default:
                            de1soclinux,50000)
      --max-bv <uint>       Max bounding volumes. Must be a power of 2.
                            (default: 128)
      --serfmt <dup|nodup>  Serialization format. (default: dup)
  -b, --tobin               Convert scene to .bin.
  -c, --tohdr               Convert scene to C header.
      --bv-report           Report on BV efficiency (might take a few
                            seconds).
  -v, --verbose             Verbose mode.

Example: ./rthost --in tests/jeep.scene --out jeep.png.