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holes in terrain mesh

Started by SlimTimmy Aug 24, 2005 at 5:35 AM 9 replies 2.1k views

Original Post

Aug 24, 2005 at 5:35 AM

My terrain, which is rendered based on a heightmap, sometimes contains little holes (these are just one pixel big). Changing the behaviour flag from D3DCREATE_HARDWARE_VERTEXPROCESSING to D3DCREATE_SOFTWARE_VERTEXPROCESSING (or running with the debug runtime of DirectX), solves this problem: the artifacts do not occur anymore. Is this just a hardware issue (I have a 6600GT)? Or may a different driver help? Another strange thing: The holes appear after some seconds (around 5) and are not visible at the start of the program. What could that mean?

Trip99

Aug 24, 2005 at 6:34 AM

Does it occur using the reference rasteriser? It may be a bug in your code that is hidden by a more forgiving software processor and the reference raterizer is normally the final word.

krum

Aug 24, 2005 at 6:39 AM

You might be overwriting a vertex or index buffer. I had a problem like this with an ATI 9800 Pro. The program would cause the machine to bluescreen on an ATI X800, but get bizarre artifacts with the 9800.

fboivin

Aug 24, 2005 at 6:43 AM

My first and only guess would be T-Junction problems. Everytime I've seen little "empty" pixels in the past it was because of a T-Junction problem! HW vs SW vertex processing probably generates screen space vertex coordinates with tiny differences and that's why you probably don't see the problem with SW processing even though it's there.

SlimTimmy

Aug 25, 2005 at 10:33 AM

I did some additional tests and i'll present you the results. Maybe you know how I could fix this problem.
I'm currently using a very simple vertex shader (a position gets transformed). After switching to the fixed function pipeline the pixel errors do not occur anymore. (btw: Does the graphics card emulate the ffp using shaders?)
Another strange result:
I made use of an indexed triangle list to improve the performance. I then switched to an unindexed list and the holes disappeared.
What can you gather from that?
And why do those holes appear after a certain time?

SlimTimmy

Aug 25, 2005 at 2:35 PM

Quote:

Does it occur using the reference rasteriser? It may be a bug in your code that is hidden by a more forgiving software processor and the reference raterizer is normally the final word.

I rendered the scene with the reference rasterizer, too. But the holes are not visible. Does this imply that the graphics card isn't working correctly?
Could the driver cause such a bizarre behaviour?

Quote:

My first and only guess would be T-Junction problems. Everytime I've seen little "empty" pixels in the past it was because of a T-Junction problem! HW vs SW vertex processing probably generates screen space vertex coordinates with tiny differences and that's why you probably don't see the problem with SW processing even though it's there.

T-cracks are often the reason for such pixel errors, but not in this case: I do not use any type of LOD, there are no vertices which lie at the edge of another triangle.

Here are the most important code snippets:

Initialization:

typedef D3DXVECTOR3	TerrainVertex;const size_t HeightmapSize = 129;const size_t NumTriangles = (HeightmapSize-1) * (HeightmapSize-1) * 2;const size_t NumIndices = NumTriangles * 3;const size_t NumVertices =  HeightmapSize * HeightmapSize;const D3DVERTEXELEMENT9 DeclArray[] ={	{0,  0, D3DDECLTYPE_FLOAT3, D3DDECLMETHOD_DEFAULT, D3DDECLUSAGE_POSITION, 0},	D3DDECL_END()};Device->CreateVertexDeclaration(DeclArray, &TerrainDecl);TerrainVertex	Vertices[NumVertices];WORD		Indices[NumIndices];TerrainVertex *v = Vertices;	for(size_t z = 0; z < HeightmapSize; ++z){	for(size_t x = 0; x < HeightmapSize; ++x)	{		v->x = static_cast<float>(x) * 10.0f;		v->y = 0.0f;		v->z = static_cast<float>(z) * 10.0f;				++v;	}}	WORD *i = Indices;	for(size_t z = 0; z < HeightmapSize - 1; ++z){	for(size_t x = 0; x < HeightmapSize - 1; ++x)	{		*i = z * HeightmapSize + x;		++i;		*i = (z+1) * HeightmapSize + x;		++i;		*i = z * HeightmapSize + x + 1;		++i;				*i = (z+1) * HeightmapSize + x;		++i;		*i = (z+1) * HeightmapSize + x + 1;	++i;		*i = z * HeightmapSize + x + 1;		++i;	}}	Device->CreateVertexBuffer( NumVertices * sizeof(TerrainVertex),                            D3DUSAGE_WRITEONLY, 0, D3DPOOL_DEFAULT, &TerrainVB, 0 );void* Dest;TerrainVB->Lock( 0, 0, &Dest, 0 );memcpy( Dest, Vertices, sizeof(Vertices) );TerrainVB->Unlock();	Device->CreateIndexBuffer( NumIndices * sizeof(WORD),                           D3DUSAGE_WRITEONLY, D3DFMT_INDEX16, D3DPOOL_DEFAULT, &TerrainIB, 0 );TerrainIB->Lock( 0, 0, &Dest, 0 );memcpy( Dest, Indices, sizeof(Indices) );TerrainIB->Unlock();                               LPD3DXBUFFER Shader;D3DXAssembleShaderFromFile("shader.txt", 0, 0, 0, &Shader, 0);Device->CreateVertexShader(reinterpret_cast<DWORD *>(Shader->GetBufferPointer()), &VertexShader);Shader->Release();

Rendering code:

Device->Clear( 0, 0, D3DCLEAR_TARGET|D3DCLEAR_ZBUFFER, D3DCOLOR_XRGB(255,255,255), 1.0f, 0 );Device->BeginScene();	D3DXMATRIX World, View, Proj, WorldViewProj;	float width = 1024.0f, height = 768.0f;D3DXMatrixPerspectiveFovLH(&Proj, D3DXToRadian(45.0f), width / height, 1.0f, 2560.0f);D3DXVECTOR3 	At(177.57913f, 3.6251740f, 599.95532f),		Up(0.21075355, 0.97133797, 0.10993398f);D3DXMatrixLookAtLH(&View, &Pos, &At, &Up);D3DXMatrixIdentity(&World);WorldViewProj = World * View * Proj;D3DXMatrixTranspose(&WorldViewProj, &WorldViewProj);Device->SetStreamSource(0, TerrainVB, 0, sizeof(TerrainVertex));Device->SetIndices(TerrainIB);Device->SetVertexDeclaration(TerrainDecl);	if( KEY_DOWN('T') ){	Device->SetVertexShader(0);	Device->SetTransform(D3DTS_WORLD, &World);	Device->SetTransform(D3DTS_VIEW, &View);	Device->SetTransform(D3DTS_PROJECTION, &Proj);}else{		Device->SetVertexDeclaration(TerrainDecl);	Device->SetVertexShaderConstantF(0, WorldViewProj, 4); 	Device->SetVertexShader(VertexShader);}	Device->DrawIndexedPrimitive( D3DPT_TRIANGLELIST, 0, 0, NumVertices, 0, NumIndices/3);	Device->EndScene();Device->Present( 0, 0, 0, 0 );

And the vertex shader:

vs_1_1def c4, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f dcl_position v0dp4 oPos.x, v0, c0dp4 oPos.y, v0, c1dp4 oPos.z, v0, c2dp4 oPos.w, v0, c3mov oD0, c4

SlimTimmy

Aug 26, 2005 at 6:15 AM

push

SlimTimmy

Aug 28, 2005 at 6:31 PM

I created a zip archive which contains the source code of the project, the compiled executable and the two images displayed below.
It would be nice if you could run the application and tell me whether you experienced the same problems as I did.

Please download the zip file

That's how it should look like:

And that's how the scene gets rendered after a couple of seconds:

You are able to switch between the ffp and vertex shaders by holding down the T key. (then the fixed function pipeline is used)

[Edited by - SlimTimmy on October 3, 2005 3:31:34 AM]