Hi i'm trying to learn shaders right now and i've gotten to the point that I need to be able to render what I see on the screen to a texture and then reuse it. where can I find help regarding render targets because I don't understand them at all. I've actually got it rendering to a target but instead of the whole screen being written to it all I get is the stuff that was in my square in the center of my screen. I'm lost on how to use render targets and I probably haven't even created them right so if someone could please direct me to a tutorial or help me out here on how to correctly create and use a render target I would appreciate it. P.S I am basically trying to create a simple visualization like you see in wmp so if you know of any tutorials on that i'd appreciate those too :).

Hi, I am fairly new to this too but I have my rendertargets working for me. This stuff may or maynot be the best way to do it however! Declaring:

	LPD3DXRENDERTOSURFACE renderSurfaceHDR[5];	LPDIRECT3DTEXTURE9 dynamicTextureHDR[5];	LPDIRECT3DSURFACE9 textureSurfaceHDR[5];

You set them up like:

		hr = D3DXCreateTexture( Device, 						Pixels, 						Pixels, 						mipmapLevels, 						D3DUSAGE_RENDERTARGET, 						D3DFMT_A16B16G16R16F, // D3DFMT_A16B16G16R16F D3DFMT_A8R8G8B8						D3DPOOL_DEFAULT, 						&dynamicTextureHDR); 		if( FAILED(hr) )		{			MessageBox(NULL,"Failed to create a texture with the D3DUSAGE_RENDERTARGET usage flag set!",					"ERROR",MB_OK|MB_ICONEXCLAMATION);			exit(-1);		}		// Create an off-screen "render to" surface...		dynamicTextureHDR->GetSurfaceLevel( 0, &textureSurfaceHDR);		textureSurfaceHDR->GetDesc( &desc );		hr = D3DXCreateRenderToSurface( Device, 							desc.Width, 							desc.Height,  							desc.Format, 							TRUE, 							D3DFMT_D16, 							&renderSurfaceHDR); //[(5 * i) + j] );		if( FAILED(hr) )		{			MessageBox(NULL,"Failed to create the off-screen render surface!",					"ERROR",MB_OK|MB_ICONEXCLAMATION);			exit(-1);		}

Then for rendering:

renderSurfaceHDR[j]->BeginScene(textureSurfaceHDR[j], NULL);				Device->Clear( 0, NULL, D3DCLEAR_TARGET | D3DCLEAR_ZBUFFER, 							D3DCOLOR_COLORVALUE(1.0f,1.0f,1.0f,1.0f), 1.0f, 0);			// render scene						renderSurfaceHDR[j]->EndScene(0);

Then you can use the texture to whatever you want to do. So if you want to render what you got to the screen just texture map something like:

Device->SetTexture(0, dynamicTextureHDR[0]);

and then remember to delete them before exiting your application. I'm using an array because I'm using render surfaces to render the scene onto a hemicube which has 5 sides.

Remember to setup any new projection matrices and cameras if you are rendering to somewhere other than to the screen.

Thanks a bunch. yeah right now all I am really trying to do is take a screenshot so the camera isn't an issue right now. well thanks a bunch i'll try that and hopefully get this working

Ok i'm an idiot.... Sorry to whoever looked at this last post of mine. I forgot to call end on my effect so it never stopped and never even loaded the second one. Well thanks for the help on render targets

[Edited by - Andruil on May 24, 2005 1:04:06 PM]