2 replies to this topic

[hupsilardee]

I want to use several different pixel shaders with several different vertex shaders in any combination. D3D11 seems to complain if the linkage doesn't match up perfectly, so to solve this I created the requirement that every vertex shader must use this and only this

 

struct VSCommonOut
{
    float4 Position : SV_POSITION;
    float2 TexCoord : TEXCOORD0;
    float3 Normal : TEXCOORD1;
    float3 WorldPos : TEXCOORD2;
    float4 DiffuseColor : COLOR0;
};

 

as output, and every pixel shader must use this and only this as input. However I have a series of questions!

 

1. Will unwritten outputs be removed by the compiler as an optimization?

3. If so can I prevent this by writing dummy outputs (eg just 0 for unused texcoords and 1 for unused colors?)

4. If I do that, there might be several unnecessary outputs going to the pixel shader (eg texcoord and color going to a write-shadow-depth pixel shader), would that damage performance?

 

NB-1. Targeting vs_4_0_level_9_3

NB-2. Assume that the HLSL compiler I am using is the latest one, ie I downloaded the windows8 kit last week when I upgraded to 8

[MJP]

1. You're required to write to all outputs of a vertex shader. The compiler will give you an error if don't write to them.
2. Yes, you can just set the outputs to a constant value if you don't want to use them.

3. Yes, vertex shader outputs can adversely affect performance. Ideally you don't want to have any vs outputs/ps inputs that don't get used.

[Hodgman]

1) unwritten outputs should be a warning/error (uninitialized variable used).
3) yes, writing default values should make the warning/error go away.
4) yes, every member of that structure will take, for example, 1 cycle per pixel to be interpolated, regardless of whether the pixel shader actually reads it or not.
[edit]damn, ninja'ed!