glam

A simple and fast 3D math library for games and graphics.

Development status

glam is in beta stage. Base functionality has been implemented and the look and feel of the API has solidified.

Features

Only single precision floating point (f32) arithmetic is supported
vectors: Vec2, Vec3, Vec3A Vec4
square matrices: Mat2, Mat3, Mat4
a quaternion type: Quat

SIMD

The Vec3A, Vec4 and Quat types use SSE2 on x86/x86_64 architectures. Mat2, Mat3 and Mat4 also use SSE2 for some functionality. Not everything has a SIMD implementation yet.

Note that this does result in some wasted space in the case of Vec3A as the SIMD vector type is 16 bytes large and 16 byte aligned.

glam outperforms similar Rust libraries for common operations as tested by the mathbench project.

Due to the use of SIMD, vector elements may only be get and set via accessor methods, e.g. Vec4::x() and Vec4::x_mut() or Vec4::set_x(). If getting or setting more than one element it is more efficient to convert from tuples or arrays:

let (x, y, z, w) = v.into();
let [x, y, z, w]: [f32; 4] = v.into();

`no_std` support

no_std support can be enabled by compiling with --no-default-features to disable std support and --features libm for math functions that are only defined in std. For example:

[dependencies]
glam = { version = "0.10.0", default-features = false, features = ["libm"] }

Optional features

bytemuck - for casting into slices of bytes
libm - required to compile with no_std
mint - for interoperating with other 3D math libraries
num-traits - required to compile no_std, will be included when enabling the libm feature
rand - implementations of Distribution trait for all glam types. This is primarily used for unit testing
serde - implementations of Serialize and Deserialize for all glam types. Note that serialization should work between builds of glam with and without SIMD enabled

Feature gates

scalar-math - compiles with SIMD support disabled
debug-glam-assert - adds assertions in debug builds which check the validity of parameters passed to glam to help catch runtime errors
glam-assert - adds validation assertions to all builds

Minimum Supported Version of Rust (MSVR)

The minimum supported version of Rust for glam is 1.36.0.

Conventions

Column vectors

glam interprets vectors as column matrices (also known as "column vectors") meaning when transforming a vector with a matrix the matrix goes on the left, e.g. v' = Mv. DirectX uses row vectors, OpenGL uses column vectors. There are pros and cons to both.

Column-major order

Matrices are stored in column major format. Each column vector is stored in contiguous memory.

Co-ordinate system

glam is co-ordinate system agnostic and intends to support both right handed and left handed conventions.

Design Philosophy

The design of this library is guided by a desire for simplicity and good performance.

No traits or generics for simplicity of implementation and usage
Only single precision floating point f32 arithmetic is supported for now
All dependencies are optional (e.g. mint, rand and serde)
Follows the Rust API Guidelines where possible
Aiming for 100% test coverage
Common functionality is benchmarked using Criterion.rs

Future work

Experiment with a using a 4x3 matrix as a 3D transform type that can be more efficient than Mat4 for certain operations like inverse and multiplies
no-std support
wasm support

Inspirations

There were many inspirations for the interface and internals of glam from the Rust and C++ worlds. In particular:

How to write a maths library in 2016 inspired the initial Vec3A implementation
Realtime Math - header only C++11 with SSE and NEON SIMD intrinsic support
DirectXMath - header only SIMD C++ linear algebra library for use in games and graphics apps
glam is a play on the name of the popular C++ library GLM

License

Licensed under either of

Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

Contribution

Contributions in any form (issues, pull requests, etc.) to this project must adhere to Rust's Code of Conduct.

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.

Thank you to all of the glam contributors!

Support

If you are interested in contributing or have a request or suggestion create an issue on github.

The Game Development in Rust Discord and Bevy Engine Discord servers can are also good places to ask for help with glam.

Attribution

glam contains code ported from the following C++ libraries:

See ATTRIBUTION.md for details.

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