Render passes operate in conjunction with framebuffers. Framebuffers represent a collection of specific memory attachments that a render pass instance uses.

Framebuffers are represented by VkFramebuffer handles:

VK_DEFINE_NON_DISPATCHABLE_HANDLE(VkFramebuffer)

To create a framebuffer, call:

VkResult vkCreateFramebuffer(
    VkDevice                                    device,
    const VkFramebufferCreateInfo*              pCreateInfo,
    const VkAllocationCallbacks*                pAllocator,
    VkFramebuffer*                              pFramebuffer);

The VkFramebufferCreateInfo structure is defined as:

typedef struct VkFramebufferCreateInfo {
    VkStructureType             sType;
    const void*                 pNext;
    VkFramebufferCreateFlags    flags;
    VkRenderPass                renderPass;
    uint32_t                    attachmentCount;
    const VkImageView*          pAttachments;
    uint32_t                    width;
    uint32_t                    height;
    uint32_t                    layers;
} VkFramebufferCreateInfo;

Image subresources used as attachments must not be used via any non-attachment usage for the duration of a render pass instance.

	Note
	This restriction means that the render pass has full knowledge of all uses of all of the attachments, so that the implementation is able to make correct decisions about when and how to perform layout transitions, when to overlap execution of subpasses, etc.

It is legal for a subpass to use no color or depth/stencil attachments, and rather use shader side effects such as image stores and atomics to produce an output. In this case, the subpass continues to use the width, height, and layers of the framebuffer to define the dimensions of the rendering area, and the rasterizationSamples from each pipeline’s VkPipelineMultisampleStateCreateInfo to define the number of samples used in rasterization; however, if VkPhysicalDeviceFeatures::variableMultisampleRate is VK_FALSE, then all pipelines to be bound with a given zero-attachment subpass must have the same value for VkPipelineMultisampleStateCreateInfo::rasterizationSamples.

To destroy a framebuffer, call:

void vkDestroyFramebuffer(
    VkDevice                                    device,
    VkFramebuffer                               framebuffer,
    const VkAllocationCallbacks*                pAllocator);