3 replies to this topic

[Corefanatic]

Hi there,
A quick question I have is about how long is a lifetime of a constant buffer within a frame. Let's assume all my vertex shaders have the same set of constant buffers:

cbuffer cbPerObject
{
float4x4 matWorld;
}

cbuffer cbPerFrame
{
float4x4 matView;
float4x4 matProj;
}

At the moment I naturally set the perObject cb with every object I draw, and perFrame with each new vertex shader I set to the pipeline. What I am wondering is, if my shaders have the the same layout , would the perFrame cb stay attached from one vertex shader to another?

[iedoc]

If i'm understanding the question right, constant buffers will stay attached to whichever shaders you bind them to, and will stay attached until you change them. If you have not bound a cb to specific shader, then that shader will not use it. Even if you have two identical vertex shaders, you will still have to bind a cb to each of them explicitly, not just to one if you want both of them to use the cb.

[mhagain]

You can bind a cbuffer at the start of a frame and have it remain valid for the entire frame, yes. I do this with a few global values and it works quite well. You may want to look to set explicit register slots in your HLSL code (like "cbuffer cbPerObject : register(b1)", for example) to make this more predictable, especially if you're using Effects.

[iedoc]

the cb will stay bound until you change it. I use a cbPerScene buffer, that is only set once per scene at initialization time