RenderDoc is a free and open source frame

debugger A debugger or debugging tool is a computer program used to test and debug other programs (the "target" program). The main use of a debugger is to run the target program under controlled conditions that permit the programmer to track its executi ...

that can be used to analyze single frames generated by other software programs such as games. RenderDoc can provide in-depth analysis of single frames from any application that uses

Vulkan Vulkan is a low- overhead, cross-platform API, open standard for 3D graphics and computing. Vulkan targets high-performance real-time 3D graphics applications, such as video games and interactive media. Vulkan is intended to offer higher perfor ...

, D3D11, OpenGL &

OpenGL ES OpenGL for Embedded Systems (OpenGL ES or GLES) is a subset of the OpenGL computer graphics rendering application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D computer graphics such as those used by video games, typically hardware-accele ...

, or D3D12. RenderDoc also allows the user to manipulate a captured frame to inspect different things such as pipeline stage, commands, texture maps, models, assets, and more. RenderDoc can also capture assets outside the view of the game's camera. RenderDoc supports analyzing frame rendering costs on the

graphics processing unit A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, m ...

. Optimizing GPU programs is about finding bottlenecks. RenderDoc provides information of the calls on the GPU, the number of invocation of each

shader In computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that calculates the appropriate levels of light, darkness, and color during the rendering of a 3D scene - a process known as ''shading''. Shaders have evolved to perform a variety of speci ...

, and the number of primitives and fragments generated. Baldur Karlsson started RenderDoc development as a spare-time project out of need for a reliable debugger and was then expanded to support more platforms. In 2014

Crytek Crytek GmbH is a German video game developer and software developer based in Frankfurt. Founded by the Yerli brothers in Coburg in 1999 and moved to Frankfurt in 2006, Crytek also operates further studios in Kyiv, Ukraine and Istanbul, Turkey. ...

announced the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

for RenderDoc is released for free. At GDC 2018, AMD announced that Radeon GPU Profiler would include support for RenderDoc. RenderDoc also integrates with well known game engines such as

Unity Unity may refer to: Buildings * Unity Building, Oregon, Illinois, US; a historic building * Unity Building (Chicago), Illinois, US; a skyscraper * Unity Buildings, Liverpool, UK; two buildings in England * Unity Chapel, Wyoming, Wisconsin, US; ...

and

Unreal Engine Unreal Engine (UE) is a 3D computer graphics game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter game '' Unreal''. Initially developed for PC first-person shooters, it has since been used in a variety of g ...

. Oculus maintains its own fork of RenderDoc.

References

{{Reflist

External links

* https://www.gamingonlinux.com/wiki/Using_Renderdoc_capture Cross-platform software Graphics standards Video game development Debuggers