Implement Mesh Shading

[AlexMollard]

Implement Mesh Shading

Objective

Refactor our current rendering pipeline to use mesh shaders, replacing the traditional vertex-fragment pipeline for improved performance and flexibility in geometry processing.

Tasks

1. Update Vulkan Initialization

• Enable Vulkan 1.2 or later
• Add mesh shader feature requirements

2. Shader Development

• Create a new mesh shader to replace vertex shader functionality
• Modify existing fragment shader to work with mesh shader outputs
• (Optional) Implement a task shader for pre-processing and culling

3. Pipeline Creation

• Update PipelineGenerator to support mesh shader pipelines
• Remove vertex input state and input assembly state from pipeline creation
• Add mesh shader stage to pipeline

4. Mesh Data Handling

• Implement Shader Storage Buffer Objects (SSBOs) for mesh data
• Create a buffer for positions, normals, texture coordinates, etc.
• Update C++ code to fill and bind these buffers

5. Draw Call Updates

• Replace traditional draw calls with vkCmdDrawMeshTasksEXT
• Implement logic to calculate appropriate group counts (X, Y, Z)

Definition of Done

• Mesh shader pipeline is fully implemented and integrated into the engine
• All existing models render correctly using the new pipeline
• Performance meets or exceeds the traditional pipeline in benchmark tests
• Code is well-documented and follows our style guidelines
• Pull request is reviewed and approved by at least one other team member

[AlexMollard]

Maybe look into Meshlet Culling once this ticket is complete.