Educational project
Modern APIs for the Design and Implementation of a Real-Time 3D Rendering Engine
SUPSI Image Focus
The thesis presents Prisma Engine, a fully custom-built real-time 3D engine developed with modern graphics technologies. Unlike using Unity or Unreal, it showcases how MSE students can engineer advanced rendering systems entirely from the ground up.
The master thesis by Denis Beqiraj tackles one of the central challenges in modern computer graphics: designing and implementing a real-time 3D rendering engine that balances efficiency, scalability, and visual realism.
Rather than relying on existing commercial engines such as Unity 3D or Unreal Engine, Denis built Prisma Engine entirely from scratch, developing the rendering architecture, resource management, and editor tools at a low level. This bottom-up approach exemplifies the engineering mindset fostered by the MSE: understanding and constructing systems from their fundamental components rather than only using pre-built frameworks.
Built upon the Diligent Engine abstraction layer, Prisma provides a unified interface to modern graphics APIs such as Vulkan, DirectX12, and OpenGL, ensuring both cross-platform portability and access to cutting-edge GPU capabilities. Its modular and extensible architecture enables experimentation with advanced real-time rendering features, including Physically Based Rendering (PBR), Image-Based Lighting (IBL), clustered lighting, screen-space effects, and hardware-accelerated ray tracing. The system also integrates physics simulation through Jolt Physics, particle systems, and a fully interactive scene editor.
A crucial step in Denis’s preparation for this project was his successful completion of the Advanced Computer Graphics course within the MSE program. The course provided the theoretical and practical foundations in rendering pipelines, GPU programming, and shading systems that were directly expanded in this thesis. It illustrates how advanced coursework at MSE empowers students to evolve from learners to creators, capable of designing and engineering complex real-time systems.
From a methodological perspective, the work bridges theoretical analysis of modern graphics APIs with the practical development of a fully functional rendering engine. Comparative evaluations demonstrate Prisma’s performance and architectural soundness against established engines, confirming that it can achieve real-time efficiency and visual fidelity on par or even better than with professional-grade solutions.
Prisma Engine is thus both a technical achievement and a didactic example of what the MSE aims to cultivate: engineers who can build, understand, and extend the technologies that underpin today’s interactive graphics systems — from their roots.
Rather than relying on existing commercial engines such as Unity 3D or Unreal Engine, Denis built Prisma Engine entirely from scratch, developing the rendering architecture, resource management, and editor tools at a low level. This bottom-up approach exemplifies the engineering mindset fostered by the MSE: understanding and constructing systems from their fundamental components rather than only using pre-built frameworks.
Built upon the Diligent Engine abstraction layer, Prisma provides a unified interface to modern graphics APIs such as Vulkan, DirectX12, and OpenGL, ensuring both cross-platform portability and access to cutting-edge GPU capabilities. Its modular and extensible architecture enables experimentation with advanced real-time rendering features, including Physically Based Rendering (PBR), Image-Based Lighting (IBL), clustered lighting, screen-space effects, and hardware-accelerated ray tracing. The system also integrates physics simulation through Jolt Physics, particle systems, and a fully interactive scene editor.
A crucial step in Denis’s preparation for this project was his successful completion of the Advanced Computer Graphics course within the MSE program. The course provided the theoretical and practical foundations in rendering pipelines, GPU programming, and shading systems that were directly expanded in this thesis. It illustrates how advanced coursework at MSE empowers students to evolve from learners to creators, capable of designing and engineering complex real-time systems.
From a methodological perspective, the work bridges theoretical analysis of modern graphics APIs with the practical development of a fully functional rendering engine. Comparative evaluations demonstrate Prisma’s performance and architectural soundness against established engines, confirming that it can achieve real-time efficiency and visual fidelity on par or even better than with professional-grade solutions.
Prisma Engine is thus both a technical achievement and a didactic example of what the MSE aims to cultivate: engineers who can build, understand, and extend the technologies that underpin today’s interactive graphics systems — from their roots.