Sokol.NET

Modern, cross-platform graphics and multimedia framework for C# with .NET NativeAOT

Sokol.NET is a comprehensive C# binding and application framework built on top of the Sokol headers, providing a modern, high-performance graphics API with support for desktop, mobile, and web platforms.

⚠️ Development Status: This project is under ongoing development, primarily driven by the needs of my internal projects. Future development beyond my personal technical requirements will depend on public interest and community contributions.

🌐 Live Examples

✨ Try all 38 examples in your browser →

Experience Sokol.NET's capabilities instantly with interactive WebAssembly examples. No installation required!

📱 Sample Browser on Google Play

📲 Download from Google Play Store | 📂 View Source Code

The Sokol.NET Sample Browser is now available on Google Play! Experience 11 interactive demos directly on your Android device, showcasing:

• 🎮 3D Graphics - Rotating cube, GLTF viewer with 12 models, offscreen rendering, instancing
• 🎨 Shader Effects - Real-time raymarching and procedural ocean shaders
• ⚛️ Physics - Interactive Box2D simulation
• 🖼️ Textures - Dynamic textures (Conway's Game of Life), PNG loading, cubemap skybox
• 📐 Advanced Rendering - Signed Distance Field (SDF) rendering

All powered by .NET NativeAOT for near-native performance on Android devices.

🎯 Features

• Cross-Platform: Deploy to Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and WebAssembly from a single codebase
• High Performance: Leverages .NET NativeAOT for near-native performance with zero overhead
• Modern Graphics: Unified API supporting Direct3D 11, Metal, OpenGL, OpenGL ES, and WebGL
• Rich Examples: 38 example applications demonstrating various graphics techniques and features
• Production Ready: Includes ImGui, Assimp, glTF, Spine, Ozz animation, and more integrations

🚀 Supported Platforms

| Platform | Runtime | Graphics API | Status | |----------|---------|--------------|--------| | Windows | JIT/NativeAOT | Direct3D 11 | ✅ Full Support | | macOS | JIT/NativeAOT | Metal | ✅ Full Support | | Linux | JIT/NativeAOT | OpenGL | ✅ Full Support | | Android | NativeAOT (Bionic) | OpenGL ES 3.0 | ✅ Full Support (APK/AAB) | | iOS | NativeAOT | Metal | ✅ Full Support | | WebAssembly | WASM | WebGL 2.0 | ✅ Full Support |

📦 What's Included

Core Libraries

• sokol_gfx: Modern 3D graphics API abstraction
• sokol_app: Unified application/window management
• sokol_audio: Cross-platform audio playback
• sokol_fetch: Asynchronous resource loading
• sokol_time: High-precision timing
• sokol_gl: OpenGL 1.x style immediate mode rendering
• sokol_gp: 2D graphics painter API
• sokol_debugtext: Text rendering for debugging
• sokol_shape: Procedural 3D shape generation

Integrated Libraries

• Dear ImGui (cimgui): Immediate mode GUI toolkit
• cgltf: glTF 2.0 loader
• Basis Universal: GPU texture compression
• fontstash: Dynamic font rendering
• stb_image: Image loading (PNG, JPG, etc.)
• pl_mpeg: MPEG1 video playback

External Optional Libraries

These libraries are available as separate dynamic libraries that can be loaded when needed:

• Assimp: 3D model loading (40+ formats) - Load dynamically via native library configuration
  • Note: May have performance issues on low-tier Android devices. Consider using GltfViewer (SharpGLTF-based) or cgltf for better compatibility and performance.
• Spine: 2D skeletal animation runtime - Load dynamically via native library configuration
• Ozz-animation: 3D skeletal animation system - Load dynamically via native library configuration

See example projects (assimp_simple, spine_simple, ozz_shdfeatures) and their Directory.Build.props files for configuration details.

Recommended: For glTF 2.0 models, use the GltfViewer example - a production-ready, full-featured glTF viewer with PBR rendering, animations, and advanced material support.

🎮 Example Applications

The examples/ folder contains 44 sample applications demonstrating various features:

Graphics Fundamentals

• clear - Basic window and clear color
• cube - Rotating 3D cube with texture
• instancing - Hardware instancing demonstration
• offscreen - Render-to-texture techniques
• mrt - Multiple render targets
• shadows - Shadow mapping implementation

Android Native Integration

• AndroidSokolApp - Native .NET for Android integration using Sokol GFX without Sokol App, demonstrating GLSurfaceView integration and manual OpenGL context management

iOS Native Integration

• IOSSokolApp - Native .NET for iOS integration using Sokol GFX without Sokol App, demonstrating MTKView integration and manual Metal context management

2D Graphics

• SkiaSokolApp - SkiaSharp sample gallery with 40+ interactive samples (shapes, text, images, filters, shaders, animations)
• sgl - 2D immediate mode rendering
• sgl_lines - Line rendering techniques
• shapes_transform - 2D transformations
• dyntex - Dynamic texture updates

Sokol GP (2D Painter)

Samples for sokol_gp — a minimal, efficient cross-platform 2D graphics painter built on top of sokol_gfx.

• sokol_gp_bench - Benchmark measuring throughput across 8 different draw patterns (rectangles, lines, points, triangles)
• sokol_gp_blend - Side-by-side comparison of all 7 blend modes on overlapping colored rectangles
• sokol_gp_effect - Custom shader effect blending two textures (tileset + Perlin noise) with per-frame uniforms
• sokol_gp_framebuffer - Off-screen MSAA framebuffer rendering, resolved and tiled across the screen with rotation
• sokol_gp_primitives - All drawing primitives (points, lines, strip, triangles, rects) with transforms across four viewports
• sokol_gp_sdf - Real-time Signed Distance Field animation via a fully custom sokol_gp shader pipeline

Text & Fonts

• debugtext - Debug text overlay
• debugtext_context - Multiple text contexts
• fontstash - TrueType font rendering
• fontstash_layers - Layered text effects

3D Models & Animation

• assimp_simple - Basic 3D model loading
• assimp_animation - Skeletal animation with Assimp
• assimp_scene - Complex scene loading
• cgltf - glTF 2.0 model loading
• CGltfViewer - Full-featured glTF 2.0 viewer using the native cgltf C library — zero-allocation loading, full PBR pipeline, skinning, morphing, IBL, bloom, and 11+ material extensions; runs on Desktop, Web, iOS, and Android
• GltfViewer - Full-featured glTF 2.0 viewer using the managed SharpGLTF C# library — PBR rendering, animations, and advanced material support; best suited for Desktop and Web
• ozz_shdfeatures - Ozz animation system with shader features

2D Animation

• spine_simple - Basic Spine animation
• spine_skinsets - Spine skin swapping
• spine_inspector - Spine animation debugger

Textures & Materials

• loadpng - PNG texture loading
• basisu - Basis Universal GPU textures
• cubemap_jpeg - Cubemap textures
• cubemaprt - Render-to-cubemap
• miprender - Mipmap generation
• vertextexture - Vertex texture fetch
• texview - Texture viewer utility
• sdf - Signed distance field rendering

UI & Integration

• cimgui - Dear ImGui integration
• imgui_usercallback - Custom ImGui rendering

Camera & Hardware

• camera_hardware - ⚠️ Work in progress — Live camera feed viewer with ImGui camera picker. Enumerate and switch between devices at runtime. Verified on macOS, iOS, Android, Web, and Windows.

Physics

• JoltPhysics - 10,000 dynamic physics bodies with GPU instancing and multithreading
• bepuphysics - BEPUphysics v2 integration with .NET physics engine

Advanced

• drawcallperf - Draw call performance testing
• plmpeg - MPEG1 video playback
• ShaderToyApp - Multi-shader gallery with 7 fragment shaders

Games

• Reversi - Playable Othello/Reversi board game with 3D discs, animated flips, touch + mouse input, adjustable AI depth, and cross-platform support (Desktop, Web, iOS, Android)

📜 Spine License Notice

Some examples in this repository (spine_simple, spine_skinsets, spine_inspector) use the Spine runtime library.

Important for Users: Wh