trying to make an abstract video object. here are my ideas: the object would be made out of two parts, the CONTROL part and DATA part. Control part would basically "control" video subsystem: when and how to draw, resolutions, color depths, etc.. while DATA would be a list of RenderObjects, which would be actually rendered. So far so good now, a renderobject would be made out of two things: RAW data (like points, triangles, curves, surfaces...) and a sort of a DESCRIPTOR, which would tell how to render this raw data. this descriptor could be made with vertex&pixel shaders... ur thoughts...? Abnormal behavior of abnormal brain makes me normal...

Vertex and fragment programs(shaders to you D3D''ers) are not a method of describing how to draw an object. Its a program in gpu level assembly that tells your video card how to process the per vertex and per pixel rasterisation information(you dont get to touch the FINAL actual fragment or primitive information). You technically _could_ use vertex and fragment to do it, and of course, feel free to do it, but i wouldn''t go about it that way....

perhaps a better way would be to create your own descriptor and based on that info set all needed rendring states and maybe even generate shaders (if needed).
so lets say we have a simple mesh (with index primitives and vertex and index buffers -> RAW data). to just "draw" this object we have enough info. after the trransformation, we know where the final polys will be, right? Now we just have to add info on how to paint them. if we keep things simple, we could say that this mesh is made out of only one material (again, keep it simple so we use only rgba values to define material) and combined with basic "goaurad" (this is hard to spell) shading this descriptor would only be a material (a list that is). if this material has alpha values, we set alpha rendring states (blending etc..), if not we use basic settings. if things were simple , this could work. but since things are not so simple, it would be nice to hear another idea...


Abnormal behavior of abnormal brain makes me normal...