Multiple-Pass Rendering

Multiple-pass rendering is a process in which an application traverses its scene graph multiple times in order to produce an output to render to the display. Multiple-pass rendering improves performance because it breaks up complex scenes into tasks that can run concurrently.

To perform multiple-pass rendering, you create a deferred context and command list for each additional pass. While the application traverses the scene graph, it records commands (for example, rendering commands such as Draw) into a deferred context. After the application finishes the traversal, it calls the FinishCommandList method on the deferred context. Finally, the application calls the ExecuteCommandList method on the immediate context to execute the commands in each command list.

The following pseudocode shows how to perform multiple-pass rendering:

{
 ImmCtx->SetRenderTarget( pRTViewOfResourceX );
 DefCtx1->SetTexture( pSRView1OfResourceX );
 DefCtx2->SetTexture( pSRView2OfResourceX );

 for () // Traverse the scene graph.
  {
    ImmCtx->Draw(); // Pass 0: immediate context renders primitives into resource X.

    // The following texturing by the deferred contexts occurs after the 
    // immediate context makes calls to ExecuteCommandList. 
    // Resource X is then comletely updated by the immediate context. 
    DefCtx1->Draw(); // Pass 1: deferred context 1 performs texturing from resource X.
    DefCtx2->Draw(); // Pass 2: deferred context 2 performs texturing from resource X.
      }

  // Create command lists and record commands into them.
  DefCtx1->FinishCommandList( &pCL1 ); 
  DefCtx2->FinishCommandList( &pCL2 );

  ImmCtx->ExecuteCommandList( pCL1 ); // Execute pass 1.
  ImmCtx->ExecuteCommandList( pCL2 ); // Exeucte pass 2.
}

Note

The immediate context modifies a resource, which is bound to the immediate context as a render target view (RTV); in contrast, each deferred context simply uses the resource, which is bound to the deferred context as a shader resource view (SRV). For more information about immediate and deferred contexts, see Immediate and Deferred Rendering.

 

Related topics

Rendering