We have been exploring shader programming in Delphi FireMonkey. In the first post, we have learned the fundamentals of computer graphics and prepared the development environment. And created a simple demo application that just renders every pixel using a blue color.
So, in the second tutorial, we have applied a custom color to the GPU shader. And made several additions to the main TCustomMaterialClass.
Now, it is time to apply a texture to the 3D object instead of using a single color. What is a texture? A texture is a bitmap that lives on the GPU.
To make it happen, we need to do some additional modifications to the Vertex and Pixel shaders. Moreover, on the Delphi side, the material is updated to reflect the new shaders
The material source controls the image bitmap. This bitmap is of type TTextureBitmap, which is a special kind of bitmap that is backed by a texture on the GPU. We connect an OnChange event handler to it so we can update the underlying material when the bitmap changes.
And the result is here:
Be sure to head over and check out the full blog post by Erik van Bilsen to learn more about Shader programming in Delphi FireMonkey!
