Voxel Renderer

A lightweight C++/OpenGL voxel renderer with chunk-based world generation, multithreaded meshing, per-vertex ambient occlusion, dynamic lighting, and distance-based fog. Built as a learning project focused on real-time rendering and concurrent systems programming.

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Features

• Chunk-based world

  • 3D voxel world split into fixed-size chunks (e.g. 16×256×16)
  • View-dependent loading/unloading based on player position and render distance
  • Efficient mesh generation per chunk

• Multithreaded pipeline

  • Background generation and meshing of chunks
  • Generic thread pool used for CPU-heavy tasks
  • Keeps the main render thread responsive even while streaming new terrain

• Thread pool

  • Simple worker-thread pool abstraction
  • Task-based API for scheduling generation and meshing jobs
  • Graceful shutdown and exception handling in worker threads

• Mesh generation

  • Per-face mesh creation driven by block data
  • Only visible faces are emitted (basic occlusion culling)
  • Supports per-vertex attributes:
    • Position
    • Normal
    • Ambient occlusion factor
    • Texture coordinates

• Lighting & Ambient Occlusion

  • Basic directional lighting in the fragment or vertex shader
  • Per-vertex ambient occlusion baked during meshing for softer lighting in corners and crevices
  • Tunable AO strength via shader uniforms

• Fog

  • Distance-based fog for depth perception and atmosphere
  • Configurable fog color and density
  • Integrated into the main lighting shader

• Rendering

  • OpenGL 3.3 core pipeline
  • Separate model, view, and projection matrices
  • Support for a texture atlas (single texture with multiple block faces)
  • Camera system suitable for first-person style navigation

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Tech Stack

• Language: C++ (C++17 or later)
• Graphics API: OpenGL 3.3
• Math: GLM
• Windowing / Input: GLFW
• Build System: CMake

For the exact list of dependencies and versions, see CMakeLists.txt and the project source.

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

• A C++17-compatible compiler (e.g. clang, gcc, or MSVC)
• CMake (recommended >= 3.20)

This project is cross platform but these instructions are windows specific

Simply run the install script in scripts/ this will install vcpkg and vcpkg + CMake will handle the rest.