Hi, I have just finshed my GUI (screenpolys and D3DXFONT). The problem is that when I launch a window covering the rest of the GUI, the window covers pixels drawn earlier but not the font. Text is always visible no matter when or what I draw to cover it. Imagine a screen full of lists, checkboxes, labels, etc. A widow appears, it covers all the gui elements, but all the texts are written on it... It looks terrible. Is D3DXFONT::DrawText(...) rendering onto a separate surface which is added on top of polygon rendering just before Present(...)? How do I avoid that? (But please don't tell me I have to make my own fonts from textures... ;-) ) Thanks Bartiss

Hi there bartiss,
How are you doing?

The Problem
Font is always ontop.

The Solution
Simple solution would be just to render the font when needed. This just means that when you bring up this window... stop rendering the font in the background ;)

Other than that... yep I would think that it be best to create your own textured font system which might be a nice touch but I know it's not the route you want to go. Might be simpler in the long run ;)


I hope this helps buddy.
Take care.

You can control the depth at which your UI text draws something like this:

pSprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND | D3DXSPRITE_SORT_TEXTURE | D3DXSPRITE_SORT_DEPTH_BACKTOFRONT);...D3DXMATRIX xform;D3DXMatrixTranslation(&xform, 0.0f, 0.0f, depth);pSprite->SetTransform(&xform);pFont->DrawText(pSprite, ...);...pSprite->End();

Setting the sprite transform will effect everything you draw subsequently with that sprite object. So when you draw the sprites for your other UI widgets, you'll probably want to specify 0 for the z-value of their position. And 'depth' should be a value between 0 and 1.

Also, make sure you are using the latest DXSDK. They just added the ability to specify both D3DXSPRITE_SORT_TEXTURE and D3DXSPRITE_SORT_DEPTH_BACKTOFRONT at the same time in the last update.

xyzzy

Thanks xyzzy00 !

I wasn't using sprites, but now when I set the depth of drawing the font I have everything I need! It works as I wanted it to!

Thanks again
Bartiss