Samples, Starter Kits, Tutorials

Re: New Content Available: SpriteBatch and BasicEffect Shaders

emzic — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:06:34 GMT

thanks a lot, i didnt see that one! :-) so it seems i need to write another contentprocessor, right? is there a way to add multiple effects to the ModelEffectCollection?

Re: New Content Available: SpriteBatch and BasicEffect Shaders

David Hunt — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:17:51 GMT

Nick Gravelyn:
Probably the one titled Custom Model Effect. ;)

That's the one. I was too lazy to look it up. ;-)

Re: New Content Available: SpriteBatch and BasicEffect Shaders

Nick Gravelyn — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:31:04 GMT

Probably the one titled Custom Model Effect. ;)

Re: New Content Available: SpriteBatch and BasicEffect Shaders

emzic — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:58:02 GMT

thanks a lot! which example exactly do you mean? because i have looked through most of them and they all seem to not use the Effects-Collection on the ModelMesh but rather call effect.begin() and effect.end() and render the indexed primitves in between.

Re: New Content Available: SpriteBatch and BasicEffect Shaders

David Hunt — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:25:45 GMT

Check out the samples section. There is a sample that shows how to use a custom effect with a model.

Re: New Content Available: SpriteBatch and BasicEffect Shaders

emzic — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:18:19 GMT

thanks a lot for this! now how do i use my custom effect? i think i will need to remove the original BasicEffect from the ModelMesh.Effects ModelEffectCollection and add my own. but unfortunately i cant find a function in the ModelEffectCollection class that allows to add or remove an effect.

Re: New Content Available: SpriteBatch and BasicEffect Shaders

Maerius — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:16:54 GMT

Well I guess you're right. There is always an option of using ID3DXSprite but if I had to rewrite SpriteBatch class I would probably do it the same way it is done, so sorry for grumbling.

Re: New Content Available: SpriteBatch and BasicEffect Shaders

Nick Gravelyn — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:33:46 GMT

I'd guess that with something like a sprite (which is two triangles) the overhead from passing a second stream in for all the positions would be no better, or worse, than just rendering the triangles. Not to mention now you have a second code branch that only works on SM3.0 meaning you have more to maintain, bug test, and worry about breaking. It's probably just the easiest and safest bet for them to just stick with one version that works across all supported machines.

But now that they've given you the shader, you can definitely write your own SpriteBatch to take advantage of anything you want. ;)

Re: Maerius - instancing

Rupe — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:27:46 GMT

You make a good point; the first thing I though of was how SpriteBatch allows many sprites with different textures. So you'd need to have a different stream for each texture. afaik you can't give the GPU a vertex and index buffer pair and tell it some triangles will be drawn with Texture A, others with Texture B, more yet with Texture C.

Re: New Content Available: SpriteBatch and BasicEffect Shaders

Maerius — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:53:04 GMT

Wouldn't it be a little more effective if SpriteBatch.RenderBatch() rendered the triangles not by using DrawIndexedPrimitives() in a while loop but using the hardware instancing by a secondary stream? Of course, only when running SM3.0. I guess that the benefit could be insignificant, but I'm just curious anybody's opinion.

Re: New Content Available: SpriteBatch and BasicEffect Shaders

DiegoBM — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 09:54:41 GMT

Thanks a lot! You are great guys! :D

New Content Available: SpriteBatch and BasicEffect Shaders

Charles Cox — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:39:15 GMT

Hey Creators,

Today we're releasing the shaders that run the SpriteBatch and BasicEffect drawing routines in the XNA Framework. This has been requested for a while, and now, thanks to Teh Shawn, we're bringing them to you.

Here's the direct links:

BasicEffect Shader

SpriteBatch Shader

They come with some simple documentation that shows you how the shader works and how to integrate it into your own game. The upshot for most cases is that now you can add your own pixel shader effects while still using SpriteBatch/BasicEffect!

Thanks, and have fun!
Charles