Deployment

Introduction

This document explains how to deploy AfterglowRender from source code.

AfterglowRender uses Visual Studio 2022 as the primary development platform; higher versions of Visual Studio are also compatable. Alternatively, you may build project using other methods if prefered.

Note that the Assets/ and Libraries/ are not included in the repository. You can download these demostration assets and pre-compiled libraries from the release page.

Library Dependencies

All required libraries are listed in the table below. You can compile them from source code, and then modify the project's build and linking configurations to include them.

We also provide a pre-compiled Libraries/ package for Windows-msvc-x64 platform: Libraries.7z ( version 0.1.0 ).

Simply extract these pre-compiled libraries to the vsbuild/Libraries/ directory, then build project from Visual Studio without additional configuration.

Name	License	Repository / Release URL
Vulkan SDK	https://vulkan.lunarg.com/license/	https://vulkan.lunarg.com/sdk/home
Assimp	https://github.com/assimp/assimp/blob/master/LICENSE	https://github.com/assimp/assimp
GCE-Math	Apache License 2.0	https://github.com/kthohr/gcem
GLFW	https://www.glfw.org/license.html	https://github.com/glfw/glfw
GLM	MIT	https://github.com/g-truc/glm
ImGUI	MIT	https://github.com/ocornut/imgui
nlohmann-json	MIT	https://github.com/nlohmann/json
OpenImageIO	Apache License 2.0	https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenImageIO

Once all the dependencies are properly configured, you can compile the project successfully.

Asset Dependencies

Even after successfully compiling the project or downloaded package from release page, the application may still failed to run. You need to extract Assets.7z ( version 0.1.0 ) and place the extracted Assets/ directory in the vsbuild/ or application directory.

Build

Prerequisites

• Visual Studio 2022+ with Desktop development with C++ and Windows 10/11 SDK;
• Libraries/ in vsbuild/Libraries/ (pre-compiled or manually compiled).
• Assets/ in vsbuild/Assets/.

Quick Build Steps

1. Open vsbuild/AfterglowRender.sln in Visual Studio.
2. Set toolbar config: Debug/Release + x64 (only 64-bit supported).
3. Build via Ctrl+Shift+B (or Build > Build Solution).
4. Run via Visual Studio or installed directory.

Note for manual compiled libraries:
Ensure library output paths match the project's VC++ Directories (Include/Library Directories) in Project Properties.

Installation

We have prepared installation scripts to deploy debug/release versions of the software built from the Visual Studio project.

These scripts are located Tools/ directory:
- Run python InstallDebug.py to install the debug version;
- Run python InstallRelease.py to install the release version;
- Run python Install.py to install both versions.

Before running the scripts, ensure:
- Pyhton 3 is installed on your computer;
- This project has been built successfully;