D3D12LookDevPTWinUI

July 27, 2026 · View on GitHub

D3D12LookDevPTWinUI is the WinUI 3 edition of the Direct3D 12 / DXR look-development path tracer. It preserves the renderer, shader pipeline, project schema, command line, benchmark output, MCP tools, and optional backends from D3D12LookDevPT while replacing ImGui and the Win32 application shell with C++/WinRT and WinUI 3.

This repository was ported from shaderjp/D3D12LookDevPT commit 605fe99dc7bc42863c3d374d532ccc134b9f651d. The renderer and HLSL baseline are kept compatible with that revision.

Screenshots

Bistro Interior	Bistro Exterior

Supported environment

Windows 11 x64 with a DXR Tier-capable GPU
Visual Studio 2026 with Desktop development with C++ and C++ WinUI tooling
MSVC v145
Windows SDK 10.0.26100.0
Windows App Runtime 2.3 x64
Git with submodule support

The first release is an unpackaged, framework-dependent x64 application. VS 2022 / v143, MSIX, self-contained deployment, and ARM64 are not supported.

The Visual Studio project pins these NuGet packages:

Package	Version
Microsoft.WindowsAppSDK	2.3.1
Microsoft.Windows.CppWinRT	2.0.250303.1
Microsoft.Direct3D.D3D12	1.619.3
Microsoft.Direct3D.DXC	1.9.2602.17

Run the setup checker before the first build:

.\Scripts\CheckSetup.ps1 -CheckDLSS -CheckNRD

The checker reports a clear failure if Windows App Runtime 2.3 x64 or a required build component is missing. Install the matching Windows App Runtime redistributable before running the unpackaged executable.

Clone and build

Clone recursively so that all pinned third-party repositories are present:

git clone --recursive <repository-url> D3D12LookDevPTWinUI
cd D3D12LookDevPTWinUI
git submodule update --init --recursive

Open D3D12LookDevPTWinUI.sln, select Debug|x64 or Release|x64, restore NuGet packages, and build. The project is configured for Local Windows Debugger, so F5 launches the unpackaged WinUI executable.

The command-line equivalent is:

$msbuild = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\18\Insiders\MSBuild\Current\Bin\amd64\MSBuild.exe"
& $msbuild .\D3D12LookDevPTWinUI.sln /m /restore /p:Configuration=Debug /p:Platform=x64

The default backend configuration is DLSS=true, NRD=true, and RTXDI=false. Each backend can be overridden independently:

& $msbuild .\D3D12LookDevPTWinUI.sln /m /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64 `
  /p:EnableDLSS=false /p:EnableNRD=false /p:EnableRTXDI=false

Assimp, DirectXTex, NRD, and RTXDI are built on demand by BuildThirdParty.ps1. To build the supported optional-backend matrix:

.\Scripts\BuildBackendMatrix.ps1 -Configuration Release -SkipLaunch

Build output is written to Bin\x64\<Configuration>. The project copies the Agility SDK, DXC-produced shaders, and available Streamline / DLSS runtimes beside the executable.

Run

Launch the editor with the preview cube:

.\Bin\x64\Debug\D3D12LookDevPTWinUI.exe

Open a scene, environment, or schema-v2 project from the Project menu, or pass the same paths used by the original application:

.\Bin\x64\Debug\D3D12LookDevPTWinUI.exe `
  --scene .\Bistro_v5_2\BistroExterior.fbx `
  --environment .\Bistro_v5_2\san_giuseppe_bridge_4k.hdr

.\Bin\x64\Debug\D3D12LookDevPTWinUI.exe `
  --project .\projects\benchmark_interactive.lookdevpt.json

Bistro_v5_2 is a local test asset directory and is intentionally ignored by git. See Asset setup.

WinUI editor

The fixed IDE-style layout contains the same nine editor panels as the source application:

Scene, Material, and Lighting on the left
Viewport, Path Tracing, Denoise, and ReSTIR on the right
Diagnostics and MCP in the bottom TabView

The left, right, and bottom regions are resizable. The View menu controls panel visibility, Show All, Reset Default Layout, F10 Render Only mode, and the System/Light/Dark application theme. Layout widths, selected tabs, visibility, and the selected theme are stored in:

%APPDATA%\D3D12LookDevPTWinUI\ui.json

Internal render resolution is independent of the window size. The 720p, 1080p, and 4K choices resize the DXR and swap-chain resources; WinUI displays the 16:9 composition surface with aspect-fit letterboxing.

The viewport keeps the original controls:

Right-drag: look
W / A / S / D and Q / E: move
Shift: fast movement
Space: reset accumulation history
F10: enter or leave Render Only mode
XInput: left stick move, right stick look, triggers down/up

Camera input is active only while the viewport is focused and is suppressed while editing a TextBox or NumberBox.

Renderer / UI threading

RendererController owns the D3D12 device, scene, renderer state, and MCP dispatcher on one std::jthread. The WinUI thread communicates through typed RendererCommand values and consumes immutable RendererSnapshot instances through EditorViewModel.

Continuous controls coalesce by setting and material/texture target. Ordered actions such as load, save, approval, and rejection remain FIFO. Validation, dirty-state changes, resource refresh, and history invalidation are applied on the renderer thread for both WinUI and MCP.

The viewport uses a three-buffer composition swap chain created with CreateSwapChainForComposition, FLIP_SEQUENTIAL, stretch scaling, and a frame-latency waitable object. WinUI attaches and detaches it through ISwapChainPanelNative. Shutdown first quiesces rendering, detaches the swap chain on the UI thread, waits for the GPU, and then releases renderer resources.

Project, settings, and logs

Schema-v2 .lookdevpt.json files and all renderer CLI options remain compatible with the source revision. A failed scene or project load leaves the current scene active.

WinUI-specific user data is isolated from the original application:

%APPDATA%\D3D12LookDevPTWinUI\settings.json
%APPDATA%\D3D12LookDevPTWinUI\startup.json
%APPDATA%\D3D12LookDevPTWinUI\materials\
%APPDATA%\D3D12LookDevPTWinUI\ui.json
%TEMP%\D3D12LookDevPTWinUI.log

Project paths may be absolute or relative to baseDirectory. See Asset setup for an example.

MCP

The MCP panel can start a local endpoint at http://127.0.0.1:<port>/mcp. The bearer token is stored in the WinUI-specific settings.json. Read-only, confirm-mutations, and allow-mutations modes are supported. Confirmed mutations are approved or rejected in the MCP panel and are executed at the same renderer-thread safe point as editor commands.

For command-line startup:

.\Bin\x64\Debug\D3D12LookDevPTWinUI.exe `
  --mcp-server --mcp-port 8777 --mcp-token <token> `
  --mcp-access confirm_mutations

See MCP integration for tools, resources, prompts, and client configuration.

Benchmarks

Benchmark CLI syntax and JSON field names are unchanged:

.\Bin\x64\Release\D3D12LookDevPTWinUI.exe `
  --project .\projects\benchmark_interactive.lookdevpt.json `
  --benchmark --benchmark-kind performance `
  --camera-path .\benchmarks\bistro_exterior_stability.camera.json `
  --frames 300 --warmup 120 --seed 1 `
  --output .\benchmark-output\performance

In the WinUI port, cpu_ui_ms measures editor command processing plus snapshot generation. gpu_ui_ms measures the final swap-chain transition; WinUI is composited separately and does not issue an ImGui GPU pass.

See Benchmark guide for captures, AOVs, and sequence analysis.

Tests

Run the inherited and WinUI boundary tests from PowerShell:

.\Scripts\TestProjectPaths.ps1
.\Scripts\TestQualitySettingsJson.ps1
.\Scripts\TestTextureLoader.ps1
.\Scripts\TestBenchmarkHarness.ps1
.\Scripts\TestBenchmarkSequenceAnalyzer.ps1
.\Scripts\TestRendererCommandQueue.ps1

The final test covers command coalescing, FIFO barriers, indexed targets, and atomic immutable snapshot publication.

Third-party revisions

ImGui is not included. Other third-party repositories remain pinned to the source baseline:

Dependency	Commit
DLSS	`a291cc7d2cc642a51566f3dfd5376f635cd1b284`
DirectXTex	`0405ccf4b834404828c1b5bd54f4ae0f1554d0d5`
NRD	`792eff196afdd350fd9c3f862119017ccb438a0e`
RTXDI	`274141af082050c9d0ad6e01a2e591d0d66b7955`
Streamline	`e8aaa6eaac968711fb62473d4ae8256dde20919b`
Assimp	`e04b60f61522e1d5594ef25addcfae7cb156f085`

The RTXDI repository records its Libraries/Rtxdi nested dependency at a14e079c727ed8c4fd3173bd2aea8244c9d9f6d6.

Shaders

The HLSL and HLSLI files are unchanged from the recorded source commit. CompileShaders preserves the original DXC profiles, defines, incremental inputs/outputs, .cso filenames, and executable-side output. No WinUI-specific shader is added; composition scaling is handled by DXGI.

License

See LICENSE. Third-party components retain their own licenses.