# Combine two streams, but not for instancing (DX9)

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Hi,

I have created a cilinder, 45 vertices per slice, 10 + 1 slices, on the Z-axis. The slices are interconnected with the use of an index buffer (so no double points).

This gives me a tube. Now I want to "bend" this tube at runtime and preferably with a lot of GPU acceleration.

So I thought using multiple stream sources would be ideal here: I'd create an extra vertex buffer (dynamic) of size 11 with each "vertex" containing a matrix (4 float4's) for a transformation to be done in the vertex shader. The buffer could be changed at every frame if I want to create a bending-animation.

But that doesn't seem to work. Am I correct that the streamsources can only be used for instancing? I used to use it also for terrain generation where stream 0 was a grid of x-z coordinates and stream 1 was the y coordinate (and more). It was a 1 on 1 combination and it worked perfectly.

But now I need the frequency to be that every 45 vertices of stream 0 are combined with the one vertex from stream 1.

Can anyone tell me if this is possible, and if not if there is another way to do what I want to do?

At this moment, I am trying to use a texture of format A32B32G32R32 (44 x 1) to store the matrices in and then tex2dlod-ding them at vertex shading time but at this moment the results are terrible. But anyway, using a texture for these kind of things always seem very "wrong" to me.

It's so bad that I need to use DX9 because I have done far more difficult things in DX10.

So, can anyone help me?

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In general for this kind of skinning you can use the vertex shader constants to store the skinning matrices. The vertex data then will contain for each vertex the matrix indices that should be used and the weight. For a good quality people tend to use up to 4 matrices per vertex.

The texture solution would work too but it’s not supported by every hardware. Therefore it would depend on your target hardware if you can go this way.

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Quote:
 Original post by scippieAt this moment, I am trying to use a texture of format A32B32G32R32 (44 x 1) to store the matrices in and then tex2dlod-ding them at vertex shading time but at this moment the results are terrible. But anyway, using a texture for these kind of things always seem very "wrong" to me.

There's really nothing "wrong" with using a texture for skinning. It's pretty simple, flexible, and plenty fast on hardware that has good support for vertex texture fetch (basically any DX10-capable hardware from Nvidia or ATI). In fact it can be faster than indexing into constant registers, since that has its own performance problems (constant waterfalling). Plus in DX9 you have a limited number of constant registers, which limits the number of bones that you can use.

Oh and keep in mind that typically you don't need the full 4x4 matrix for skinning, since the last column is usually just [0 0 0 1]. So you can probably just pack 4x3 matrices.

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Ok, thanks, you guys put me on track!

I now seem to have some results with the constant matrix table. I don't know why it didn't work before as I had tried this approach. Now it sort of work.

But when I try it with the texture it doesn't work at all, the matrices seem to be corrupt.

Can someone tell me what's wrong here?

...m_pD3DDev->CreateTexture(11 * 4, 1, 1, D3DUSAGE_DYNAMIC, D3DFMT_A32B32G32R32F, D3DPOOL_DEFAULT, &m_txTubeTrans, 0);...D3DLOCKED_RECT lr;m_txTubeTrans->LockRect(0, &lr, 0, 0);for (int x = 0; x < 11; ++x){  D3DXMATRIX m;  D3DXVECTOR3 p;  D3DXVECTOR3 r;  GetTrajectoryPoint(((float)x / 20.0f), p, r); // (x / 20) is just a temporary test here  D3DXMatrixTranslation(&m, p.x, p.y, p.z);  ((D3DXMATRIX*)lr.pBits)[x] = m;}m_txTubeTrans->UnlockRect(0);...m_fxTube->SetTexture("texTrans", m_txTubeTrans);...

float4x4        mWorldViewProj;texture         texTrans;sampler         smpTrans = sampler_state {	Texture         = texTrans;	MinFilter       = POINT;	MagFilter       = POINT;	MipFilter       = POINT;};struct VS_IN{	float3 		pos : POSITION;	float2      tex : TEXCOORD;	float       tri : BLENDINDICES;};PS_IN vs(VS_IN i){	PS_IN o;		float f = 1.0f / 44.0f;	float4x4 mT = float4x4(		tex2Dlod(smpTrans, float4(i.tri + 0 * f, 0, 0, 0)),		tex2Dlod(smpTrans, float4(i.tri + 1 * f, 0, 0, 0)),		tex2Dlod(smpTrans, float4(i.tri + 2 * f, 0, 0, 0)),		tex2Dlod(smpTrans, float4(i.tri + 3 * f, 0, 0, 0))	);		o.pos = mul(mul(mT, mWorldViewProj), float4(i.pos.xyz, 1));		return o;}...

The results are totally corrupt while with the same approach with a constant table, like this:

float4x4        mWorldViewProj;float4x4	mSkin[11];struct VS_IN{	float3 		pos : POSITION;	float2      tex : TEXCOORD;	float       tri : BLENDINDICES;};PS_IN vs(VS_IN i){	PS_IN o;		float4x4 mT = mul(mSkin[(int)i.tri], mWorldViewProj);		o.pos = mul(mT, float4(i.pos.xyz, 1));		return o;}

with the correct C++ code with it of course, it almost works, it's not corrupt.
(can anyone tell me why I need to do the cast to (int) on the i.tri? If I don't only the right half of the tube is correct, the left half is flat.

What am I doing wrong in my texture lookup version?

And then, I'm saying it almost works, but it doesn't do what I expect, it doesn't seem to deform at all. If I put something that should really do something inside the matrices instead of the GetTrajectoryPoint function I used, I still see no deformation at all.

I really put a different value in the vertex for the tri-value. To make sure, here's the code I use to generate the tube:

struct vertex {	float x, y, z;	float tx, ty;	float tr;};std::vector<vertex> vTube;std::vector<WORD>   iTube;for (int x = 0; x <= 10; ++x){	for (int a = 0; a <= m_nGeometrySteps; ++a)	{		float s = sin((float)D3DX_PI / ((float)m_nGeometrySteps / 2.0f) * (float)a);		float c = cos((float)D3DX_PI / ((float)m_nGeometrySteps / 2.0f) * (float)a);		vertex vv;		vv.x = c;		vv.y = s;		vv.z = (float)x / 10.0f;		vv.tr = (float)x;		vTube.push_back(vv);	}	if (x < 10)	{		for (int a = 0; a <= m_nGeometrySteps; ++a)		{			iTube.push_back(x * (m_nGeometrySteps + 1) + a);			iTube.push_back((x + 1) * (m_nGeometrySteps + 1) + a);		}	}}...

And then I put it in a vertex buffer and index buffer.

This is my vertex declaration:
D3DVERTEXELEMENT9 decl[] = {		{0, 0, D3DDECLTYPE_FLOAT3, D3DDECLMETHOD_DEFAULT, D3DDECLUSAGE_POSITION, 0 },		{0, 0, D3DDECLTYPE_FLOAT2, D3DDECLMETHOD_DEFAULT, D3DDECLUSAGE_TEXCOORD, 0 },		{0, 0, D3DDECLTYPE_FLOAT1, D3DDECLMETHOD_DEFAULT, D3DDECLUSAGE_BLENDINDICES, 0 },		D3DDECL_END()	};

Lots of questions... anyone?

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Quote:
 Original post by MJPOh and keep in mind that typically you don't need the full 4x4 matrix for skinning, since the last column is usually just [0 0 0 1]. So you can probably just pack 4x3 matrices.

I will surely implement this when I get things working but I don't want to add extra possible errors.

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And still, can anyone tell my why it doesn't work with two streams? Are two streams only for instancing?

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Multiple vertex streams are not just for instancing.

Check out this old thread, still applicable with DX9:

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=572675&whichpage=1�

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