Anvil : a tool for visual debugging of rendering pipelines

Abstract

Debugging software can be challenging and numerous tools are used to aid in this task. Moreover, inspecting and debugging software of a certain nature such as those found in the subdomain of physically based rendering, where stochastic methods are often utilised, can be even more challenging. Traditional debugging in these cases is not ideal and in many cases not sufficient to help pinpoint certain issues, such as finding defects in the distribution of reflected rays in a ray-based rendering scenario. To address these issues we propose Anvil, a visual debugging tool that aims to seamlessly integrate within user applications, adhering to the what you don’t use, you don’t pay for C++ zero-overhead principle. Anvil is meant to be flexible, reusable, and extensible while adopting a low memory footprint. To achieve its goals, Anvil makes use of reflection-like techniques, adopts in situ analysis, and provides event hooks to communicate with the user application.