MaterialRequiredStreams Class Reference

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Detailed Description

This class is used for describing the mesh stream requirements of a material.

By default, 3ds Max automatically generates MaterialRequiredStreams for all materials. However if a material plugin wants to provide customized hardware shaders, it must provide a MaterialRequiredStreams as well. Other plugins like the object plugin, will provide render items that suffice the requirement.

We create this class for two reasons:

First, a mesh contains a lot of channels however a material may be interested in a few channels of that mesh (eg. Position and the first texture coordinate channel). Converting a mesh channel to vertex buffer is a time and memory consuming job, therefore the material provide a MaterialRequiredStreams to indicate which channel is used by the material to minimize the number of vertex buffers we created.

Second, after we converted mesh channels to vertex buffers, it is necessary to indicate details like how is the vertex buffers are organized in hardware streams and the usage index of the channels. The usage index is used by hardware shaders of the material to differentiate the channels with the same type and usage. For example, if a material wants uv map channel 99 be treated as TEX0 in hardware shaders and uv map channel 32 may be treated as TEX1. Then the following code may be necessary:

    MaterialRequiredStreams requirement;

    // add position, normal and other streams.
    ...

    MaterialRequiredStreamElement texCoord99;
    texCoord99.SetType(EVertexType_Float3);
    texCoord99.SetUsage(EVertexUsage_Texcoord);
    texCoord99.SetChannelID(99); // set the max channel id
    texCoord99.SetUsageIndex(0);
    requirement.AddStream(texCoord99); // uv channel 99 is TEX0 in shaders

    MaterialRequiredStreamElement texCoord32;
    texCoord32.SetType(EVertexType_Float3);
    texCoord32.SetUsage(EVertexUsage_Texcoord);
    texCoord32.SetChannelID(32); // set the max channel id
    texCoord99.SetUsageIndex(1);
    requirement.AddStream(texCoord32); // uv channel 32 is TEX1 in shaders

#include <MaterialRequiredStreams.h>

Inheritance diagram for MaterialRequiredStreams:

List of all members.

Public Member Functions
DataBridgeAPI	MaterialRequiredStreams ()
DataBridgeAPI	MaterialRequiredStreams (const MaterialRequiredStreams &from)
DataBridgeAPI MaterialRequiredStreams &	operator= (const MaterialRequiredStreams &from)
DataBridgeAPI	~MaterialRequiredStreams ()
DataBridgeAPI void	Clear ()
	Remove all streams from this requirement.
DataBridgeAPI size_t	AddStream (const MaterialRequiredStreamElement &streamElement)
	Add a stream to this requirement.
DataBridgeAPI size_t	FindStream (const MaterialRequiredStreamElement &streamElement) const
	Find the index of a stream element.
DataBridgeAPI void	RemoveStream (size_t index)
	Remove the stream element specified by the given index from this requirement.
DataBridgeAPI size_t	GetNumberOfStreams () const
	Get the number of streams of the requirement.
DataBridgeAPI const MaterialRequiredStreamElement &	GetStreamElement (size_t i) const
	Get the field of the i-th stream.
DataBridgeAPI int	Compare (const MaterialRequiredStreams &rhs) const
	Compare two MaterialRequiredStreams.
DataBridgeAPI unsigned long	GetFlags () const
	Get extra flags of this requirement.
DataBridgeAPI void	SetFlags (unsigned long flags)
	Set extra flags of this requirement.
bool	operator== (const MaterialRequiredStreams &rhs) const
bool	operator!= (const MaterialRequiredStreams &rhs) const
bool	operator< (const MaterialRequiredStreams &rhs) const
bool	operator<= (const MaterialRequiredStreams &rhs) const
bool	operator> (const MaterialRequiredStreams &rhs) const
bool	operator>= (const MaterialRequiredStreams &rhs) const

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Constructor & Destructor Documentation

DataBridgeAPI MaterialRequiredStreams

(

)

DataBridgeAPI MaterialRequiredStreams

(

const MaterialRequiredStreams &

from

)

DataBridgeAPI ~MaterialRequiredStreams

(

)

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Member Function Documentation

DataBridgeAPI MaterialRequiredStreams& operator=

(

const MaterialRequiredStreams &

from

)

DataBridgeAPI void Clear

(

)

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Remove all streams from this requirement.

DataBridgeAPI size_t AddStream

(

const MaterialRequiredStreamElement &

streamElement

)

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Add a stream to this requirement.

Simply return existing stream index if the stream to be added is already in the array.

Parameters:

streamElement

the stream element to add.

Returns:

the newly added stream index, or the existing stream index.

DataBridgeAPI size_t FindStream

(

const MaterialRequiredStreamElement &

streamElement

)

const

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Find the index of a stream element.

Parameters:

streamElement

the element to find

Returns:

the index to the found element, if not found, returns (size_t)-1

DataBridgeAPI void RemoveStream

(

size_t

index

)

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Remove the stream element specified by the given index from this requirement.

Parameters:

index

the index to the stream element.

DataBridgeAPI size_t GetNumberOfStreams

(

)

const

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Get the number of streams of the requirement.

Returns:

the number of streams.

DataBridgeAPI const MaterialRequiredStreamElement& GetStreamElement

(

size_t

i

)

const

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Get the field of the i-th stream.

Parameters:

i	the index to the stream.

Returns:

the field of the i-th stream.

DataBridgeAPI int Compare

(

const MaterialRequiredStreams &

rhs

)

const

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Compare two MaterialRequiredStreams.

Parameters:

rhs	the "right-hand-side" MaterialRequiredStreams of the compare function.

Returns:

1 if this object is greater than rhs, -1 if this object is less than rhs, zero otherwise.

DataBridgeAPI unsigned long GetFlags

(

)

const

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Get extra flags of this requirement.

The extra flag should be a combination of MaterialRequirementFlags.

Returns:

the extra flags.

DataBridgeAPI void SetFlags

(

unsigned long

flags

)

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Set extra flags of this requirement.

The extra flag should be a combination of MaterialRequirementFlags.

Parameters:

flags

extra flags.

bool operator==

(

const MaterialRequiredStreams &

rhs

)

const [inline]

{
    return Compare(rhs) == 0;
}

bool operator!=

(

const MaterialRequiredStreams &

rhs

)

const [inline]

{
    return Compare(rhs) != 0;
}

bool operator<

(

const MaterialRequiredStreams &

rhs

)

const [inline]

{
    return Compare(rhs) < 0;
}

bool operator<=

(

const MaterialRequiredStreams &

rhs

)

const [inline]

{
    return Compare(rhs) <= 0;
}

bool operator>

(

const MaterialRequiredStreams &

rhs

)

const [inline]

{
    return Compare(rhs) > 0;
}

bool operator>=

(

const MaterialRequiredStreams &

rhs

)

const [inline]

{
    return Compare(rhs) >= 0;
}