Many C++ coders have a base library they use for a variety of experiments, tools, apps, utilities, etc. Polymer is mine. It started as a sandbox, complete with a scene editor + engine to explore AR/VR prototyping, but eventually became my go-to library of reusable components for most other side projects. The core lib-polymer has a lot of low-dependency utilities that I hope others might find useful.
Polymer is designed as a collection of static libraries. lib-polymer is a base library consisting of common data structures and algorithms familiar to game developers. lib-engine depends on lib-polymer and introduces an entity-component system alongside a physically-based rendering pipeline. lib-engine also offers a runtime asset management solution. Lastly, lib-model-io contains code to import, export, and optimize common geometry formats (presently obj, ply, and fbx).
Polymer requires a recent version of Windows 10 alongside a graphics driver capable of supporting an OpenGL 4.5 context. The build system is CMake.
Windows SDK is required to build the project. You may download it here
Note: If the build fails with the message Windows SDK version 10.0.16299.0 not found and you have installed the Windows SDK correctly, you might need to change the Windows SDK version in each project properties and select the one you've installed.
The API of Polymer is in flux. A growing number of sample projects have been assembled in the samples/ directory to demonstrate a variety of Polymer's libraries and features. Most projects depend on both lib-polymer and lib-engine although many do not use features in lib-engine beyond GLFW window creation and event handling. A small number of tests projects verify the correctness of critical internal systems, but also act as an interim reference for functions or objects lacking formal documentation.
Polymer is in early-stages of development and welcomes both experienced and inexperienced open-source contributors. The GitHub issue queue is a good place to start in understanding the scope and priority of upcoming features. For larger pull requests and feature implementations, it is good practice confirm with the project maintainer(s) before embarking on the work.
Polymer is released under the BSD 3-clause license. As a framework/engine, Polymer incorporates ideas, code, and third-party libraries from a wide variety of sources. Licenses and attributions are fully documented in the COPYING file.
If you use Polymer in a project that leads to publication or a public demo, we appreciate a citation. The BibTex entry is:
@Polymer{Diakopoulos19,
author = {Dimitri Diakopoulos],
title = {Polymer: A Prototyping Framework for Spatial Computing},
year = {2019},
month = {01},
url = {https://github.com/ddiakopoulos/polymer/},
note = {\url{https://github.com/ddiakopoulos/polymer/}}
}