More Development Activity Ticking Up Around Vulkan For Blender

There has long been plans for supporting the Vulkan API with the Blender 3D modelling open-source software but there has been a lack of developers working on it. Fortunately, things are starting to (slowly) come together on Vulkan enablement for Blender.

An initial empty Vulkan back-end has now been added. Yes, it's empty and not useful for end-users, but has been said to be a blocker for other developers wanting to start pushing their own Vulkan work. Today's Eevee/viewport module meeting notes mention:

- Initial commit with empty vulkan backend has been added. Several developers mentioned that they were waiting for that to happen to actual start working on it. Work should be organized in the #eevee-viewport-module chat channel.

- Initial patch for changes to GHOST was added as well.

Those wanting to track this Vulkan bring-up progress can do so via Blender's temp-ghost-vulkan Git code branch.

Blender's temp-ghost-vulkan branch this morning added the support for initializing the Vulkan back-end, last week was initial support for MoltenVK for ultimately allowing Vulkan API use by Blender on Apple macOS, and various other early stage Vulkan work.

It will likely be quite a while before the Vulkan API support is fully embraced and ready for end-users of Blender, but it's nice at least seeing some progress being achieved. And hopefully more developers will begin toying with the Vulkan support as mentioned, now that there is the empty back-end in place.