Framework 4 (Last updated: October 25, 2019)Framework 3 (Last updated: February 6, 2017)Framework 2 (Last updated: October 8, 2006)Framework (Last updated: October 8, 2006)Libraries (Last updated: September 16, 2004)Really old framework (Last updated: September 16, 2004)
Custom resolve
Thursday, March 27, 2008 | Permalink
One of the more interesting features of D3D10 is access to individual samples in a multisampled texture. This has a lot of uses and one of the most obvious is to implement a custom resolve of the multisampled buffer. This allows an application to combine the samples in the buffer in any way it likes in a shader. One reason an application may want to do that is because of HDR rendering. Any decent tonemap operator will have a non-linear response, which makes regular resolves that average samples produce low quality antialiasing. In fact, even with just relatively modest contrast ratios the effect of antialiasing will diminish or even disappear. The solution to this problem is to make a custom resolve shader that tonemaps all samples individually and average the results after tonemapping, rather than before, which will be the case with a regular resolve.
For a more in-depth explanation of this technique check out my article "Post-tonemapping resolve for high quality HDR antialiasing in D3D10" in
ShaderX6.
This demo should run on Radeon HD 2000 series and above and GeForce 8000 series and above.
Executable