Tutorials

Welcome to the Zenith.NET tutorials! These step-by-step guides will help you learn how to use Zenith.NET for GPU programming.

Getting Started

New to Zenith.NET? Start here to set up your environment and render your first graphics.

Tutorial	Description
Prerequisites	Set up your development environment with App framework, IRenderer interface, and BindingHelper
Hello Triangle	Create vertex buffers, compile Slang shaders, and build your first graphics pipeline
Textured Quad	Load textures, create samplers, and bind resources with ResourceLayout and ResourceTable
Spinning Cube	Use constant buffers for MVP matrices and render 3D geometry with depth testing

Intermediate

Build on the basics with GPU compute and advanced rendering techniques.

Tutorial	Description
Compute Shader	Create compute pipelines for GPU image processing (grayscale conversion)
Indirect Drawing	GPU-driven rendering with DrawIndexedIndirect for multi-instance drawing

Advanced

Explore cutting-edge GPU features for modern rendering (requires hardware support).

Tutorial	Description	Requirement
Ray Tracing	Build acceleration structures (BLAS/TLAS), use RayQuery for ray tracing with soft shadows, reflections, and ACES tonemapping	RayTracingSupported
Mesh Shading	Render 1,000 sphere instances with amplification shader frustum culling and mesh shading pipeline	MeshShadingSupported

Tutorial Structure

Each tutorial follows a consistent pattern:

1. Overview - What you'll build and the key concepts covered
2. Key Concepts (advanced tutorials) - In-depth explanation of new API features
3. Renderer Class - Complete, runnable implementation code
4. Running the Tutorial - How to switch renderers and run the example
5. Result - Screenshot of the expected output
6. Code Breakdown - Step-by-step explanation of important code sections

All tutorials share the same App framework. Run dotnet run and select a tutorial from the interactive menu in Program.cs.

Learning Path

Stage	You Will Learn
Prerequisites	Set up the application framework, graphics context, and cross-platform resource binding
Hello Triangle	Create GPU buffers, compile shaders, configure graphics pipelines, and submit draw commands
Textured Quad	Load and sample textures, use index buffers, and bind shader resources
Spinning Cube	Pass data to shaders via constant buffers, implement 3D transformations, and enable depth testing
Compute Shader	Run general-purpose GPU computations for image processing
Indirect Drawing	Let the GPU control draw parameters for efficient multi-instance rendering
Ray Tracing	Build acceleration structures, trace rays with RayQuery, implement soft shadows, reflections, Fresnel, and ACES tonemapping
Mesh Shading	Use amplification shaders for GPU-driven frustum culling with mesh shading at scale (1,000 instances)

Requirements

Before starting, ensure you have:

• .NET 10.0 SDK or later
• A GPU with DirectX 12, Metal 4, or Vulkan 1.4 support
• Visual Studio 2026, VS Code, or JetBrains Rider

Note

These tutorials are designed for desktop platforms (Windows, macOS, and Linux). See Prerequisites for detailed platform support and setup instructions.

Source Code

Tip

The complete source code for all tutorials is available on GitHub: ZenithTutorials