Buffer Confusion

[fumanshoo]

As a noob programmer, I am just a tad confused on the concept of buffers... I know that it has to do with rendering things and memory management, but are they optional or are they just one of those perks to programming? I just don't understand how to use them... what I guess i'm asking for is an example on how they are used...

[macklebee]

http://www.leadwerks.com/wiki/index.php?title=Buffers

[fumanshoo]

I was on this page when the question popped into my head. I should have read more though because I clicked on the PDF and I see now that it can be used for motion blurr and such.

[ChrisMAN]

Buffers are a chunk of memory on the video card. You can perform commands such as drawing that will modify buffer. You can render a buffer to the screen or save it as a texture. It is a pretty abstract concept.

[Josh]

When you render to a texture, you are actually rendering to a color and depth texture, and sometimes more. A buffer is just a collection of textures that can be rendered to.

[fumanshoo]

mmk, so at least there's a pretty decent reason for my confusion...

 

ohhhh so it's more about just plain textures than post-processing effects like motion and Gaussian blurr.

 

this probably belongs on general discussion then because I thought it was more about memory consumption.

[Josh]

Well, you take those textures you rendered the scene to, then you draw them on the screen with a shader, and that is how post-processing effects are done. But you don't have to worry about that if you just use the Framework class, since it does all that for you.

[fumanshoo]

oh wow, thanks for telling me that, I was about to do a lot of unnecessary work. I see the SetSSAO and bloom and contrast and such, but is there no SetMotionBlurr? Or do you have to do that without the frameworks class.

[Josh]

Motion blur is not supported.

[fumanshoo]

But I thought you could do it with post-processing by drawing the postbuffer color texture onscreen with an

alpha blend or are you saying that it is not supported in Frameworks...

[Josh]

Well yeah, you can do that if you know how, but it's rather advanced.

[fumanshoo]

i'll figure it out someday haha. I am really interested in it though and I hope that motivates me to figure it out sometime soon.

[Daimour]

A little example of using buffers: http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/4746-load-texture-pieces/#entry41584

 

It's not a postprocess filter, but may be usefull for undestanding buffers.

[ChrisMAN]

A little example of using buffers: http://www.leadwerks...ces/#entry41584

 

It's not a postprocess filter, but may be usefull for undestanding buffers.

 

I have looked that this post a bunch of times. It was very helpful. Rendering to buffers seems to be ok every frame as long as you aren't creating buffers but rather reusing a buffer and clearing it.