One Shader - multiple objects with different textures

[launemax]

Hy there!

I have a question about shaders:

I want to have a lot of flags or signs, where the players can put their own texture/image on. So i have to create for each object a new shader and set the shadervalue of the texture to a different image, but then i have lots of shaders.

Is there a way to create 1 shader and depending on which ElementData an object has, to set a different shadervalue? So i can save a lot of load of my server.

thanks for the answer in advance,

regards,

launemax

[ALw7sH]

This is an exmaple code

local flags = { 
"Flag" 
"Flag2" 
} 
local flagsShaders = {} 
  
addEventHandler("onClientResourceStart",root, 
function() 
    for k,image in ipairs(flags) do 
    local flagTexture = dxCreateTexture(image..".png","dxt3") 
    local flagShader = dxCreateShader("shader.fx") 
    dxSetShaderValue(flagShader,"YourShaderTextureName",flagTexture) 
    flagsShaders[image] = flagShader 
    end 
end 
) 
  
addEventHandler("onClientElementStreamIn",root, 
function() 
    if getElementType(source) == "object" then 
        if getElementModel(source) == 0 then -- Your flag object id 
        local flagIMG = getElementData(source,"flagIMG") 
        engineApplyShaderToWorldTexture(flagsShaders[flagIMG],"YourObjectTextureName",source) 
        end 
    end 
end 
) 

[launemax]

Thanks, but thats the thing i want to avoid.

There are a lot of Shaders. I thought, if I just create one shader and apply different textures, it would be more efficient.

Am I right? The more shaders i create, the more rendering power is required?

[Ren_712]

Thanks, but thats the thing i want to avoid.

There are a lot of Shaders. I thought, if I just create one shader and apply different textures, it would be more efficient.

Am I right? The more shaders i create, the more rendering power is required?

This doesn't seem to matter much. What matters is how many textures visible on screen the shader is applied to. vertex and pixel calculations are done when they're needed. (You can always create shader per entity - when it's streamed in) And you can change values per shader, not per texture. Exception are dxDrawImage and dxDrawMateriaLine3D - after drawing one you can just change values before you draw another (in the same frame).