Aura3D Documentation
Welcome to Aura3D — a lightweight, high-performance and extensible Avalonia 3D control library. The docs are organized by task: get something running first, go deeper as you need, and check the notes and quick references when something goes wrong.
Getting Started
| Document | Contents |
|---|---|
| Quick Start | Install the package → drop in the control → a box + a light → run and see a picture |
| Your First Full App | Load a model → aim the camera → per-frame animation → click picking, wired into one working app |
Scene Basics
| Document | Contents |
|---|---|
| Scene Graph and Nodes | The node tree and transforms → which node to use → batch edits and lookups |
| Loading and Placing Models | glTF loading → scale / position / orientation → fitting the camera and bounding boxes |
| Cameras and View Control | Projection and LookAt → CameraController mouse orbit → multi-camera and render targets |
| Lighting and Shadows | The three light types → per-type light limits → shadow configuration and CSM |
| Materials and Textures | Material channels and textures → loading textures → sampling settings → custom material parameters |
| Environment and Background | Scene background (solid / texture / cube map) → HDR environments and IBL |
| Animation System | Playing and controlling skeletal animation → blend spaces and state machines → manual bone control |
| Particle System | Emitter configuration → emission shapes → mesh particles and flipbooks → debugging and performance |
Advanced
| Document | Contents |
|---|---|
| Instanced Rendering | InstancedMesh → per-instance attributes → HISM hierarchical instancing → incremental updates |
| Custom Materials and Shaders | Material-level shader replacement → the shader macro mechanism → per-instance custom attributes |
| Choosing and Configuring Pipelines | Built-in pipeline catalog and how to pick → PipelineSettings → lighting / shadow / tone-mapping parameters |
| Custom Render Pipelines | Writing your own RenderPipeline / RenderPass → shader variants and compilation → the GLES 3.0 subset |
| GPU Resource Lifecycle | The IGpuState contract → upload-on-demand and reclamation → context loss and restoration |
Pitfalls and Reference
| Document | Contents |
|---|---|
| Platforms and Render Backends | Which rendering path each platform takes → macOS / iOS / Android / Browser configuration → the three required .NET 10 Release settings |
| Common Pitfalls and Troubleshooting | Indexed by symptom: black screen, platform silent failures, shaders, configuration timing, context and lifecycle |
| Node and Scene Reference | Every node class with members and namespaces — for looking up, not reading |
| Built-in Passes and Shader Macros | Built-in passes and their passKeys → vertex attribute location conventions → macro combinations |
Where to Start
- First time: Quick Start alone is enough.
- Something looks wrong: open Common Pitfalls and Troubleshooting first.
- Shipping to a platform: Platforms and Render Backends.