When should I clear an auxilliary render target?

Posted by Raptormeat on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by Raptormeat
Published on 2013-11-13T22:42:13Z Indexed on 2014/06/05 21:44 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 165

Filed under:

directx

|

directx10

I'm using a few different render targets in my game in addition to the back buffer. These other render targets are only used in a few places, for specific tasks.

I'm wondering when I should be clearing them. Right now I clear all of my render targets at the beginning of the frame, and it seems like I'm waiting for all the textures to clear before the rest of the drawing gets underway.

Would it be more efficient to clear these textures later in the frame, when they aren't being used? Is there any hope of the GPU sort of clearing them "on the side" while unrelated rendering is happening? Or are these tasks always sequential and will I always need to wait for clearing?

© Game Development or respective owner

Related posts about directx

Compatibility between DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 shaders

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I am a beginner to game development and as I am used to programming in C# I decided to go for XNA. I've been playing around with it for a while and now I am learning the basics of HLSL shaders, I have noticed in the MSDN documentation that there have been some syntax changes in HLSL between DirectX… >>> More
DirectX 9 or DirectX 10 for starters ??

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I want to do projects to make my resume more appealing to game companies. So I am going to start buying books. But I don't know rather to read DirectX 9 or 10 api books to start off with. DirectX10 is great, but it seems the industry is moving slow to 10. so should I use 9 or go with 10 ?? >>> More
book "Programming Role Playing Games with DirectX 2nd edition" and newer DirectX api

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I got the book "Programming Role Playing Games with DirectX 2nd edition" and I notice there are things in the book that are now considered deprecated. There is a whole Section on DirectPlay. And as much as I would like to avoid this section, I am afraid it might screw up the entire engine he is trying… >>> More
Need help transforming DirectX 9 skybox hlsl shader to DirectX 11

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I am in the middle of implementing a skybox to my game. I have been following this tutorial http://rbwhitaker.wikidot.com/skyboxes-2. I am using MonoGame as a framework and in order to support both Windows and Windows 8 metro I need to compile the shader with pixel and vertex shader 4. compile vs_4_0_level_9_1 compile… >>> More
load directx xfile in xaml/wpf

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
How can I load a .x file in xaml/wpf? >>> More

Related posts about directx10

Reading from a staging 2D texture array in DirectX10

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I have a DX10 program, where I create an array of 3 16x16 textures, then map, read, and unmap each subresource in turn. I use a single mip level, set resource usage to staging and CPU access to read. Now, here is the problem: Subresource 0 contains 1024 bytes, pitch 64, as expected. Subresource… >>> More
DirectX10 How to use Constant Buffers

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I'm trying to access some variables in my shader, but I think I'm doing this wrong. Say I have a constant buffer that looks like this: cbuffer perFrame { float foo; float bar; }; I got an ID3D10EffectConstantBuffer reference to it, and I can get a specific index by calling GetMemberByIndex… >>> More
DirectX11 Swap Chain Format

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I was wondering if anyone could elaborate any further on something thats been bugging be me. In DirectX9 the main supported back buffer formats were D3DFMT_X8R8B8G8 and D3DFMT_A8R8G8B8 (Both being BGRA in layout). http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb174314(v=vs.85).aspx With… >>> More
DirectX: How to render a texture to screen (DirectX10.1)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi, I'm having some troubles finding out how i can render an offscreen texture to the screen. Can anyone help me with pointing me in the right direction? Thx >>> More
Direct2d off-screen rendering and hardware acceleration

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I'm trying to use direct2d to render images off-screen using WindowsAPICodePack. This is easily achieved using WicBitmapRenderTarget but sadly it's not hardware accelerated. So I'm trying this route: Create direct3d device Create texture2d Use texture surface to create render target using CreateDxgiSurfaceRenderTarget Draw… >>> More