I'm currently working in wgpu in order to reap the efficiency benefits over OpenGl. A common pattern in my previous graphics code is to draw many meshes with separate buffers, separate uniform data, but the same shaders. It looks something like this (in C++):
glUseProgram(m_myProgram();
for(Mesh &mesh : m_meshes){
glBindVertexArray(mesh.vaoId());
glUniformMatrix4fv(m_transformationMatrixId, camera.getMatrix(mesh.getLocation());
glDrawElements(GL_TRIANGLES, mesh.indexCount(), GL_UINT, nullptr);
}
(there may be some subtle and irrelevant error — I haven't used OpenGl in awhile)
Yet, when I try to replicate the same pattern in Rust with wgpu, I run into issues.
let view_projection = self.camera.build_view_projection_matrix();
let mut render_pass = encoder.begin_render_pass(&RenderPassDescriptor {
color_attachments: &[RenderPassColorAttachmentDescriptor {
attachment: &frame.view,
resolve_target: None,
load_op: LoadOp::Clear,
store_op: StoreOp::Store,
clear_color: Color {
r: 0.1,
g: 0.2,
b: 0.3,
a: 1.0,
},
}],
depth_stencil_attachment: None,
});
render_pass.set_pipeline(&self.render_pipeline);
render_pass.set_bind_group(0, &self.uniform_buffer_bind_group, &[]);
for mesh in &self.mesh{
mesh.render(&mut encoder, &mut render_pass, &view_projection, &self.uniform_buffer, &self.device); //ERROR! Can't borrow `encoder` mutably becuase `render_pass` is itself a mutable borrow, which already exists
}
The render function looks like this:
//build matrix
let model_matrix = Matrix4::from_translation(self.location);
let final_matrix = view_projection*model_matrix;
//send matrix to gpu
let uniforms = Uniforms::new_from_matrix(final_matrix);
let buffer = device.create_buffer_with_data(
bytemuck::cast_slice(&[uniforms]),
BufferUsage::COPY_SRC
);
command_encoder.copy_buffer_to_buffer(&buffer, 0, &uniform_buffer, 0, std::mem::size_of_val(&uniforms) as BufferAddress); //A mutable borrow to the command encoder is needed here in order to update uniforms
//setup buffers
render_pass.set_vertex_buffer(0, &self.vertex_buffer, 0, 0);
render_pass.set_index_buffer(&self.index_buffer, 0, 0);
//render
render_pass.draw(0..self.index_count, 0..1);
Clearly, the mutable borrow is needed to update uniforms. I strongly prefer, for efficiency, to not start a new render pass for every mesh. So, I ask, how can I update uniform data in wgpu during a render pass, to render many meshes with the same settings (aside from the uniforms)? Is there some other, better, way to accomplish what I want (render many meshes with their own buffers and uniforms, but shared shader)?
I read through the docs.rs entry for wgpu very thoroughly, but I can't find anything relevant to what I want. I also tried, and failed, to find a serious FOSS project that uses wgpu so that I could see how it handles this problem.
Note that I'm using wgpu 0.5.0 instead of 0.6.0 because that's what the best introductory documentation for wgpu that I can find uses.