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Chapter 7: Building a Simple Neural Radiance Cache

This chapter adds a neural radiance cache (NRC) to the Vulkan glTF path tracer in this folder. A small network trains while the renderer runs and predicts indirect lighting. The project builds independently of the other chapters.

Requirements

  • Windows or Linux, Git, CMake 3.22+, and a C++20 compiler (Visual Studio 2022 on Windows).
  • A Vulkan SDK with cooperative-vector headers, and an NVIDIA GPU/driver supporting VK_NV_cooperative_vector training with FP32 accumulation.
  • The pinned nvpro_core2 and RTX Neural Shading (RTXNS) checkouts below.

CMake selects Slang 2026.5 for the NRC shaders and downloads additional build dependencies. CUDA Toolkit is needed if you want the optional OptiX denoiser.

Build and run

Run these commands from Chapter07. Keep the dependency revisions pinned; the renderer was written against these versions.

git clone https://github.com/nvpro-samples/nvpro_core2.git
git -C nvpro_core2 checkout 334ed20e4bde4623ce507ca01b9f2d3b7cd6a846
git clone https://github.com/NVIDIA-RTX/RTXNS.git
git -C RTXNS checkout 1a2513120190a43f61c23590811a8b80ec914bd7
git -C RTXNS submodule update --init --recursive

On Windows, use a terminal with the Visual Studio C++ tools available:

cmake -S . -B build -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64
cmake --build build --config Release
.\_bin\Release\Chapter07.exe

On Linux, with Ninja installed:

cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build
./_bin/Release/Chapter07

The executable takes its name from the source folder, so it is Chapter07 in this checkout. NRC is enabled by default. In the path tracer settings, use NRC Left and NRC Right to compare it with the regular path tracer; turn off DLSS when comparing NRC.

If RTXNS is installed elsewhere, pass -DRTXNS_ROOT=<path> when configuring. Optional denoisers can be disabled with -DUSE_DLSS=OFF and -DUSE_OPTIX_DENOISER=OFF.

Code and further reading

Commit bf2ace0 added NRC to vk_gltf_renderer. Its diff shows the cache implementation and the path tracer changes covered in this chapter.

Start with src/nrc/ for the cache implementation and src/renderer_pathtracer.cpp for its integration into the renderer. The user guide covers scene loading and renderer controls; the developer guide covers the wider codebase.

This renderer is based on NVIDIA's Vulkan glTF renderer