Chimera Engine

Chimera Engine is an original workstation-inspired, element-based sample instrument plugin built with JUCE and CMake.

The project targets VST3, AU on macOS, and a standalone app. The engine is organized around layered elements, multisample zones, envelopes, LFOs, filters, modulation, effects, and performance presets.

Build

Requirements:

• CMake 3.24+
• C++20 compiler
• Python 3.10+
• Platform plugin SDK requirements handled by JUCE

Configure and build:

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build --config Release
ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure

Sample Sources & Licensing

Bundled samples must be acquired only through scripts/fetch_samples.py and must have a valid entry in samples/LICENSES.csv before they are copied into the sample library.

The license audit runs in CI:

python3 scripts/audit_sample_licenses.py

Allowed licenses for bundled audio are CC0, public domain, and CC-BY with attribution text.

Current Status

The instrument is not yet a complete production release.