However, there are still two really good reasons to learn Metal: If this sounds like you, we have tons of tutorials to help you get started with Apple Game Frameworks or Unity. If all you’re trying to do is make a game, you’ll probably use a higher-level game framework like SpriteKit, SceneKit or Unity most of the time because doing so will make your life much easier. They provide much of the boilerplate code you normally need to write in a game, such as rendering a sprite or 3D model to the screen. The trade-off is that you have full power and control.Ĭonversely, higher-level game frameworks like SpriteKit, SceneKit and Unity are built on top of a lower-level 3D graphics APIs like Metal or OpenGL ES. It’s a very thin layer above the GPU, which means that, in doing just about anything, such as rendering a sprite or a 3D model to the screen, it requires you to write all of the code to do this. Metal is a low-level 3D graphics API, similar to OpenGL ES, but with lower overhead meaning better performance. SpriteKit, SceneKit or Unityīefore you get started, it’ll be helpful to understand how Metal compares to higher-level frameworks like SpriteKit, SceneKit or Unity. To complete this tutorial, you’ll need an A7 device or newer. Note: Metal apps do not run on the iOS simulator they require a device with an Apple A7 chip or later. If you do have some prior 3D-programming or OpenGL experience, you’ll find things much easier, as many of the same concepts apply to Metal. This tutorial is designed so that anyone can go through it, regardless of your 3D graphics background - however, things will move along fairly quickly. In doing so, you’ll learn some of the most important classes in Metal, such as devices, command queues and more. In this tutorial, you’ll get hands-on experience using the Metal API to create a bare-bones app: drawing a simple triangle. Instead, it’s designed to be extremely efficient with Apple hardware, offering improved speed and low overhead compared to using OpenGL ES. The difference is that Metal is not cross-platform. Metal is similar to OpenGL ES in that it’s a low-level API for interacting with 3D graphics hardware. In iOS 8, Apple released its own API for GPU-accelerated 3D graphics: Metal. Note that some of those modules can be used in standalone mode, independently of raylib library.Update note: Andrew Kharchyshyn updated this tutorial for iOS 12, Xcode 10 and Swift 4.2. Everything is contained within a small number of well defined, specific and self-contained modules, named accordingly to its primary functionality.
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