PhasmaEngine is a Vulkan and DirectX 12 3D engine for learning graphics techniques, with an experimental WebGPU C API layer. Vulkan runs on Windows and Linux; DX12 is Windows-only.
- Deferred Rendering
- Ray Tracing — full and hybrid modes (Vulkan and DirectX 12 / DXR)
- Hybrid RT transparency: transmission, refraction, Fresnel/TIR
- Physically Based Rendering (PBR)
- Image Based Lighting (IBL)
- Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)
- Screen Space Reflections (SSR)
- Cascaded Shadow Maps (GPU-culled cascades)
- Bloom
- Depth of Field
- Motion Blur
- Tone Mapping
- FXAA
- Temporal Anti-Aliasing with RCAS Upscale
- Frustum Culling
- GPU Occlusion Culling (two-phase temporal Hi-Z)
- Mesh Level of Detail (LOD)
- Render Graph
- Day/Night Skybox with HDR environment maps
- HLSL shaders compiled via DXC/shaderc
- Experimental WGSL support through PhasmaWebGPU
- Shader hot-reload with file watching
- Multiple model formats loading (via Assimp)
- Mesh optimization (via meshoptimizer)
- Directional, Point, Spot, and Area lights
- Cameras and lights as scene nodes (Add Component)
- Scene save/load (.pescene) and prefabs (save/instantiate node hierarchies)
- Physics — Jolt rigid bodies, trigger zones, static terrain/voxel colliders; Box2D for 2D
- Physics-driven walk camera (collide via forces) + auto-attached adaptive fly camera
- Skeletal animation
- Audio (miniaudio)
- Particle system
- Runtime UI — script-driven HUD panels, text, buttons, images
- Trigger Zones — box regions with opt-in Script (on_enter/on_exit), Post-Process, Audio, Physics force-field, and spawn/streaming/camera sections
- Post-Process Volumes & Scene Settings node (per-effect spatial blending)
- Per-axis transforms and material editing
- Voxel World node (cube voxels; Vulkan + DX12): streamed chunks with packed 8-byte vertices, temporal Hi-Z occlusion, distance LOD bands, alpha-blended water with sea-level worldgen, per-column edit persistence
- Voxel worldgen options: procedural noise knobs (height/scale/seed/caves) or layered heightmaps (surface + strata thickness + features maps), elevation-banded surface blocks, scattered features (trees, rocks, roads, block paint) from a 22-layer texture atlas
- Terrain node (smooth isosurface terrain): streamed Surface Nets tiles updated in place (no rebuild hitches), noise or heightmap worldgen, worldgen overhangs, persistent CSG sculpting (
terrain.sculpt/terrain.sculpt3d, saved with the scene), painted caves layer, per-tile Jolt colliders following the camera - Map Painter — in-editor painting of every world input map (surface height, strata, features with a block-tile palette, terrain caves) with pan/zoom canvas, resize, and save + live rebuild
- ImGui-based editor
- Pinnable Properties panel
- Script editor with live function browser ("Show Functions")
- CPU/GPU metrics
- Debug console
- Lua scripting (incl.
tween.tohelpers for smooth animation/camera focus) - Event system
- Editor module C++ hot reload (PhasmaEditorModule.dll)
- Named editor actions invokable without mouse input (agents/automation)
PhasmaEngine has no in-engine LLM. Instead, PhasmaEditor runs an in-process MCP (Model Context Protocol) HTTP server at http://127.0.0.1:8765/mcp, letting external AI clients control the engine directly.
Supported clients:
- Claude Code — add
.claude/settings.json:{ "mcpServers": { "phasmaeditor": { "type": "http", "url": "http://127.0.0.1:8765/mcp" } } } - Claude Desktop — use
mcp-remotebridge inclaude_desktop_config.json:"phasmaeditor": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "http://127.0.0.1:8765/mcp"] }
Toggle the server from Connection → MCP Server in the editor. The Connection → RAG submenu controls codebase indexing. Status bar shows live MCP and indexing state.
Available MCP tools: scene/model management, camera, lights, materials, shaders, Lua execution, screenshots, mouse injection, editor actions, codebase search (BM25), file read/write, and more. See PhasmaMCP README for the underlying library.
PhasmaPlayer also has an opt-in loopback MCP (Lua execution, screenshots, state, plus script-registered tools) for testing shipped games.
The glTF sample models used for testing are not bundled with this repository — they are large and freely available upstream. Download them externally from the Khronos glTF Sample Models repo:
Keep them outside the project tree. In the editor, use File → Import to cook a source model (glTF/FBX/OBJ/…) into the engine's portable .pemesh format (GPU-ready geometry + materials + embedded textures written alongside), or File → Import → Folder to mirror and cook a whole folder at once. The runtime (desktop and Android) loads only .pemesh; the repository itself ships only a primitives scene, so a clean checkout has no external asset dependencies.
christoskaramou/PhasmaProjects is a companion repository for project data rather than engine source. It can contain ready-to-open project roots with phasma_project.json, Assets/Scenes/*.pescene, scripts, textures, cooked .pemesh meshes, and other runtime assets.
Download or clone it anywhere outside the engine checkout, for example beside PhasmaEngine:
git clone https://github.com/christoskaramou/PhasmaProjects.gitEach project should look like this:
PhasmaProjects/
MyProject/
phasma_project.json
Assets/
Scenes/
Scripts/
Textures/
The manifest tells the editor and player which assets folder to use and, optionally, which scene to open first:
{
"version": 1,
"name": "MyProject",
"assets": "Assets",
"startup_scene": "Assets/Scenes/sponza.pescene"
}The easiest setup is through PhasmaLauncher: open the Project picker, select a project root that contains phasma_project.json (or select an Assets folder for older manifest-free projects), then choose a startup scene from Assets/Scenes if one is not already set by the manifest. The launcher writes the selection to phasma_settings.json next to the executable, and both PhasmaEditor and PhasmaPlayer use that active project assets root on launch.
If you run the editor or player directly, create or edit the executable-local phasma_settings.json yourself:
{
"project_path": "C:/path/to/PhasmaProjects/MyProject/",
"project_manifest": "C:/path/to/PhasmaProjects/MyProject/phasma_project.json",
"startup_scene": "Assets/Scenes/sponza.pescene"
}Use forward slashes in paths on Windows. If the project does not have a manifest, omit project_manifest and point project_path directly at the assets folder.
PhasmaEngine uses Tracy as a Git submodule. For a normal clone, fetch submodules with the repository:
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/christoskaramou/PhasmaEngine.gitIf you already cloned without submodules, initialize them afterwards:
git submodule update --init --recursiveFor a smaller day-to-day checkout that avoids downloading old reachable history, clone only current master with blob filtering:
git clone --depth 1 --single-branch --branch master --filter=blob:none --recurse-submodules --shallow-submodules --also-filter-submodules https://github.com/christoskaramou/PhasmaEngine.gitPhasmaEngine uses CMake to configure and generate project files. The CMakeLists.txt is in the root folder.
PhasmaEditor supports runtime graphics API selection:
- Vulkan (default, Windows/Linux):
PhasmaEditor --api vulkan - DirectX 12 (Windows-only):
PhasmaEditor.exe --api dx12
You can also set PHASMA_API to vulkan or dx12, or write graphics_api / api in phasma_settings.json next to the executable.
WebGPU support is experimental and lives in PhasmaWebGPU, a WebGPU C API layer over PhasmaCore. It builds with the PE_WEBGPU CMake option and runs through dedicated WebGPU sample/test executables rather than PhasmaEditor --api selection.
Download prebuilt packages from the latest GitHub prerelease:
The Windows package includes Vulkan and DX12 launchers; DX12 is Windows-only, so the Linux package ships the Vulkan backend.
CMake: Download CMake and install it. See CMake documentation for more information.