Damn, Im trying to architect some really basic rendering classes just to get stuff rendering more easily, although I can sketch down their structures, I dont know how to decide if its members should be pointers, or who should initialize the stuff...

I get stuck when I start to think if they should create stuff theirselfs ( textures, shaders, inputlayouts), or if I should have a "cache" class, with creates those and returns just a pointer (resource manager?)

For example, I was thinking in some stuff like that (dont mind my very low experience with oop x rendering):

class IShader
member: PipeState (holds input layout, blendstate, rasterstate, vs, ps..)
member: UpdateCBs(ICBData*)

class SpriteShader:IShader
members: dx constant buffers

class Sprite:ICBData
members: texture(ID? view?shared pointer), pos, uv, scale

So...Who creates PipeState data(should PipeState itself be a IShader pointer or an object?)?
They can be reutilized right? So how/where do I create, and whats the best way to share(how do I aquire)...Theres just too many ways of doing it, and I dont have experience to know what to do..
A resource manager comes to mind, but Im not sure if its over engeneering, And I dont know how it would look like..

I'm not super experienced myself and I've struggled with this subject as well, it can become a real task tracking down resources, making sure they are disposed etc. I have experimented with a few methods, some hopelessly unscalable. But then a few iterations ago i started using a ResourceManager of sorts using an abstract class BufferedResource, which all buffered resources must inherit from. It was very very simple, it had a constructor :


public BufferedResource()
{
ResourceManager.Register(this);
}


The ResourceManager was then responsible for disposal. That was pretty effective and I really liked that resources were automatically registerd and disposed without me having to lift a finger (as long as I wrote the wrapper class in the first place that inherited). I've also tried using an EffectsManager class, where all shaders and inputLayouts are defined and they are just requested as needed. That worked pretty well too. What I'm using now is just another implementation of all that really .. I have a GameResourceServer which inherits from ResourceServer with the following interface :


public class ResourceServer
{
protected Dictionary<String, IDisposable> resources = new Dictionary<String, IDisposalbe>();
public void AddResource(String key, IDisposable resource)
public Object GetResource(String key)
public void DisposeAll()
public void DisposeResource(String key)
}


And GameResourceServer (not required if you just want to make resources wherever, and i do sometimes) is where i create most of my resources. And then i just request them as needed. I have found this to be a really easy way to manage disposal. And I always know where my resources are ! Having said that, I have strayed a little and have started creating resources elsewhere where they are needed and just adding them to the ResourceServer at creation. I havent really found a problem with this yet, as I guess the crux of the system is AddResource() / GetResource() / DisposeResource() / DisposeAll(). I know it sounds simple and perhaps some pro's may have something to say, but I have found this system very usable and it solves some of my resource management issues.