dr2d - 2d Data Renderer

GPU-accelerated 2D data renderer built in Rust on wgpu.

dr2d is a rendering primitive. It handles vertices, viewports, data, and GPU. Meaning belongs to the layer above — dr2d renders triangles, it does not interpret them.

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                      dr2d                           │
│                                                     │
│  ┌───────────┐   ┌───────────┐   ┌──────────────┐  │
│  │  Renderer  │   │  Viewport  │   │  InputQueue  │  │
│  │  ├ SDF     │   │  pan/zoom  │   │  events      │  │
│  │  ├ Tess    │   │  transform │   │  drain()     │  │
│  │  └ Frame   │   └───────────┘   └──────────────┘  │
│  └───────────┘                                      │
│                                                     │
│  ┌───────────┐   ┌───────────────────────────────┐  │
│  │   Scene    │   │           Data                │  │
│  │  shapes    │   │  ParquetLoader  CoordMapper   │  │
│  │  viewpoints│   └───────────────────────────────┘  │
│  └───────────┘                                      │
│                                                     │
│  ┌─────────────────┐   ┌──────────────────────┐    │
│  │  Text (feature)  │   │  Headless (feature)  │    │
│  │  GlyphAtlas      │   │  HeadlessRenderer    │    │
│  └─────────────────┘   └──────────────────────┘    │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Rendering Pipeline

begin_frame(viewport)
    │
    ├── draw_sdf(shape, instances)      ← SDF pipeline (resolution-independent)
    ├── draw_instanced(mesh, instances) ← shared mesh + per-instance transforms
    ├── draw_triangles(vertices)        ← flat triangle list
    │
    └── finish()                        ← submit + present

The renderer maintains two GPU pipelines:

• SDF pipeline — expands a unit quad per instance, evaluates signed distance functions in the fragment shader for anti-aliased, resolution-independent shapes
• Tessellation pipeline — renders pre-tessellated triangle meshes with optional instancing, used for polygons, rectangles, and text glyphs

Both pipelines share a single uniform bind group containing the viewport transform matrix.

Features

• SDF rendering — resolution-independent shapes (circle, rounded rect, ring, diamond, line cap) with anti-aliased edges
• Instanced rendering — draw_sdf, draw_instanced, draw_triangles
• GPU rendering via wgpu (Vulkan, Metal, DX12, WebGPU)
• Parquet/Arrow data loading with streaming row-group reads
• Viewport with pan, zoom, fit-to-data, window-to-scene coordinate conversion
• Mouse and keyboard input with scene coordinate mapping
• Lyon-based polygon tessellation with caching
• Text rendering (feature: text) — embedded glyph atlas, ASCII
• Headless rendering (feature: headless) — render to RGBA pixel buffer

Quick Start

use dr2d::{Renderer, Viewport, SdfShape, SdfInstance};

let renderer = Renderer::new(window).await?;
let viewport = Viewport::new();

let mut frame = renderer.begin_frame(&viewport)?;
frame.draw_sdf(SdfShape::Circle, &[SdfInstance {
    position: [100.0, 100.0],
    size: [20.0, 20.0],
    color: [1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0],
    shape_type: SdfShape::Circle as u32,
    param: 0.0,
    _pad: [0.0; 2],
}]);
frame.finish();

API Reference

Renderer

Creates and manages the GPU context, pipelines, and frame lifecycle.

// Create renderer attached to a winit window
let renderer = Renderer::new(window).await?;

// Resize the rendering surface
renderer.resize(width, height);

// Frame lifecycle
let mut frame = renderer.begin_frame(&viewport)?;
// ... draw calls ...
frame.finish();
// or: renderer.end_frame(frame)?;

// Convenience: render all scene shapes in one call
renderer.render(&mut scene, &viewport)?;

// Query window dimensions
let (w, h) = renderer.window_size();

FrameEncoder

Returned by begin_frame(). Records draw calls into a GPU command encoder.

All draw calls skip silently when given empty slices.

SDF Shapes

Built-in signed distance function shapes evaluated per-fragment on the GPU:

SdfInstance

Per-instance data for SDF rendering (48 bytes, GPU-aligned):

Vertex / InstanceData

Viewport

2D translation (pan) and uniform scale (zoom). Transforms scene coordinates to NDC for GPU rendering.

let mut vp = Viewport::new(); // pan=(0,0), zoom=1.0

vp.set_pan(100.0, -50.0);
vp.set_zoom(2.0)?; // returns Err if zoom <= 0

// Build 3×vec4 transform matrix for GPU uniform buffer
let matrix: [f32; 12] = vp.transform_matrix(window_width, window_height);

// Convert window pixel coordinates to scene coordinates
let (scene_x, scene_y) = vp.window_to_scene(px_x, px_y, win_w, win_h);

Fields: pan_x: f32, pan_y: f32, zoom: f32 (all public).

InputQueue / InputEvent

Buffers input events between frames. Events carry both screen and scene coordinates.

let mut queue = InputQueue::new();
queue.push(event);
let events: Vec<InputEvent> = queue.drain();

InputEvent variants:

Use convert_window_event() to translate winit WindowEvent into InputEvent.

Scene

Container for shapes and named viewpoints. Shapes are sorted by layer for draw ordering.

let mut scene = Scene::new();

let id = scene.add_shape(shape)?;
scene.update_shape(id, new_shape)?;
scene.remove_shape(id)?;
let shape_ref = scene.get_shape(id);
let sorted: &[ShapeId] = scene.shapes_sorted();

Shape geometry types:

Shape properties: color: [f32; 3], opacity: f32, layer: i32, border_color: Option<[f32; 3]>, border_width: f32.

Viewpoints:

scene.register_viewpoint("overview".into(), viewpoint);
let vp = scene.activate_viewpoint("overview")?;
scene.remove_viewpoint("overview");

Data Module

ParquetLoader

Reads Parquet files into Arrow RecordBatch or extracts typed column pairs. Supports streaming row-group reads. Numeric columns (f32, f64, i32, i64) are cast to f32 automatically.

// Stream columns directly from file
let pair = ParquetLoader::load_columns(path, "x", "y")?;

// Load full RecordBatch, then extract
let batch = ParquetLoader::load(path)?;
let pair = ParquetLoader::extract_columns(&batch, "x", "y")?;

ColumnPair contains x: Vec<f32> and y: Vec<f32>.

CoordinateMapper

Linear mapping from data value ranges to scene coordinate ranges.

let mapper = CoordinateMapper::from_column_pairs(&[&pair1, &pair2]);

let (scene_x, scene_y) = mapper.map_point(data_x, data_y);
let points: Vec<[f32; 2]> = mapper.map_all(&pair);

Default scene range: 0.0..1000.0 on both axes.

Text (feature: text)

Embedded glyph atlas with geometric outlines for ASCII characters (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, common punctuation). Tessellated into triangle vertices via lyon.

let atlas = GlyphAtlas::new();
let vertices: Vec<Vertex> = atlas.tessellate_string("Hello", x, y, font_size);

Unknown characters are skipped but the cursor still advances.

Headless (feature: headless)

Render to an in-memory RGBA pixel buffer without a window. Creates a wgpu device without a surface.

let mut hr = HeadlessRenderer::new().await?;
let pixels: Vec<u8> = hr.render_to_image(800, 600).await?;
// pixels.len() == 800 * 600 * 4

Returns HeadlessError::InvalidDimensions if width or height is zero. PNG encoding is left to downstream consumers.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Built-in interaction processor translates input events into viewport mutations.

Using dr2d Downstream

Add dr2d as a dependency in your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
dr2d = "0.0.1-alpha.1"

# Optional features
# dr2d = { version = "0.0.1-alpha.1", features = ["text", "headless"] }

Minimal windowed application:

use std::sync::Arc;
use dr2d::{Renderer, Viewport, Scene, SdfShape, SdfInstance};

async fn run(window: Arc<winit::window::Window>) {
    let mut renderer = Renderer::new(window).await.unwrap();
    let viewport = Viewport::new();

    // Draw a red circle
    let mut frame = renderer.begin_frame(&viewport).unwrap();
    frame.draw_sdf(SdfShape::Circle, &[SdfInstance {
        position: [0.0, 0.0],
        size: [50.0, 50.0],
        color: [1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0],
        shape_type: SdfShape::Circle as u32,
        param: 0.0,
        _pad: [0.0; 2],
    }]);
    frame.finish();
}

For scene-based rendering with shapes and tessellation:

use dr2d::{Renderer, Viewport, Scene};
use dr2d::scene::shape::{Shape, ShapeGeometry};

let mut scene = Scene::new();
scene.add_shape(Shape {
    geometry: ShapeGeometry::Rectangle { x: 10.0, y: 10.0, width: 200.0, height: 100.0 },
    color: [0.2, 0.4, 0.8],
    opacity: 1.0,
    layer: 0,
    border_color: None,
    border_width: 0.0,
}).unwrap();

renderer.render(&mut scene, &viewport).unwrap();

Feature Flags

Examples

cargo run --example scatter_sdf -p dr2d
cargo run --example custom_shapes -p dr2d
cargo run --example headless_export -p dr2d --features headless

CLI

The dr2d-cli crate loads TOML scene files and renders them in a window.

cargo run -p dr2d-cli -- scene.toml
cargo run -p dr2d-cli -- scene.toml --watch   # hot-reload on file change

Philosophy

See PHILOSOPHY.md.

License

Apache 2.0 — Copyright 2026 Krishnamoorthy Sankaran. See LICENSE.

All source files carry the following header convention:

// SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0