Originally Posted By: Slin
It would be a big improvement, if there where lots of shader defines and shaders being compiled and used for the needed variations


I receive great workflow results with dynamically compiled shaders, based on the .fx code and a preamble, generated during runtime, used together with the following function:

Code:
MATERIAL* avCompileMtl (MATERIAL* m, char* file, char* preamble, char* technique)
{
    if (m == NULL)
        return NULL;
    
    if (technique != NULL)
        m->technique = technique;

    if (file != NULL)
    {
        int s = 0;
        void* c = file_load(file, NULL, &s);

        if (s != 0)
        {
            STRING* strShader = NULL;
            
            if (preamble != NULL)
            {
                strShader = str_create(preamble);
                
                str_cat(strShader, "\n");
                str_cat(strShader, c);
                
                effect_load(m, strShader);
            }
            else
                effect_load(m, c);
                
            file_load(NULL, c, NULL);
            
            if (strShader != NULL)
                ptr_remove(strShader);
        }
    }
            
    return m;
}


In your game infrastructure, you just need to create a function that evaluates certain information (like variables and flags) and generate a series of defines (separated with "\n") to generate a preamble, that you can use to structure your HLSL shader-code with #ifdef and #ifndef. You can even use this to dynamically re-arrange samplers, by adding e.g. "#define SKIN_SPEC entSkin3" to your preamble and use SKIN_SPEC in the sampler definition: sampler smpSpecular = sampler_state { Texture = < SKIN_SPEC >; };, whereas the string above is e.g. generated by an int and sprintf.

Originally Posted By: Slin
It would also be great if there was a possibility not to clear the depth buffer before rendering some view


Do you mean the NOSKY flag? I used it to render particles into a SSAO-shaded scene and it works really good.

Last edited by HeelX; 05/13/13 21:08.