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doc: Adds some documentation for CoglIndices

This adds just some basic documentation to try and explain what
CoglIndices are useful for.

Reviewed-by: Neil Roberts <neil@linux.intel.com>
This commit is contained in:
Robert Bragg 2011-10-25 21:45:49 +01:00
parent 98dc73a8f7
commit a8fbde4710

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@ -40,7 +40,58 @@ G_BEGIN_DECLS
* @short_description: Fuctions for declaring a range of vertex indices
* stored in a #CoglIndexBuffer.
*
* FIXME
* Indices allow you to avoid duplicating vertices in your vertex data
* by virtualizing your data and instead providing a sequence of index
* values that tell the GPU which data should be used for each vertex.
*
* If the GPU is given a squence of indices it doesn't simply walk
* through each vertex of your data in order it will instead walk
* through the indices which can provide random access to the
* underlying data.
*
* Since it's very common to have duplicate vertices when describing a
* shape as a list of triangles it can often be a significant space
* saving to describe geometry using indices. Reducing the size of
* your models can make it cheaper to map them into the GPU by
* reducing the demand on memory bandwidth and may help to make better
* use of your GPUs internal vertex caching.
*
* For example, to describe a quadrilateral as 2 triangles for the GPU
* you could either provide data with 6 vertices or instead with
* indices you can provide vertex data for just 4 vertices and an
* index buffer that specfies the 6 vertices by indexing the shared
* vertices multiple times.
*
* |[
* CoglVertex2f quad_vertices[] = {
* {x0, y0}, //0 = top left
* {x1, y1}, //1 = bottom left
* {x2, y2}, //2 = bottom right
* {x3, y3}, //3 = top right
* };
* //tell the gpu how to interpret the quad as 2 triangles...
* unsigned char indices[] = {0, 1, 2, 0, 2, 3};
* ]|
*
* Even in the above illustration we see a saving of 10bytes for one
* quad compared to having data for 6 vertices and no indices but if
* you need to draw 100s or 1000s of quads then its really quite
* significant.
*
* Something else to consider is that often indices can be defined
* once and remain static while the vertex data may change for
* animations perhaps. That means you may be able to ignore the
* negligable cost of mapping your indices into the GPU if they don't
* ever change.
*
* The above illustration is actually a good example of static indices
* because it's really common that developers have quad mesh data that
* they need to display and we know exactly what that indices array
* needs to look like depending on the number of quads that need to be
* drawn. It doesn't matter how the quads might be animated and
* changed the indices will remain the same. Cogl even has a utility
* (cogl_get_rectangle_indices()) to get access to re-useable indices
* for drawing quads as above.
*/
typedef struct _CoglIndices CoglIndices;