The ability of replacing StructuredBuffer?

[laicasaane]

Hi, once again, thank you for this brilliant library.

Currently I'm in need of making my project compatible with at least Android 10, so StructuredBuffer cannot be used because only Android 11 and latest support it. Could you point out to me important parts of the library and in the shader I have to change or any knowledge I should be aware of? Given that I don't know much about shader.

Thanks!

[Antoshidza]

Hello! I want to help you but I limitted with my knowledge about rendering (even when I've created sprite rendering system).

So here things that I can tell:

• RenderArchetype depend on using ComputeBuffer. This thing used to be filled with entities data. Then I use MaterialPropertyBlock.SetBuffer(id, buffer) and here we can use GraphicsBuffer as well as ComputeBuffer. But I can also tell that GraphicsBuffer has no BeginWrite so it can't be used inside job, but it can be filled with NativeArray<T> on main thread, so theoretically we can write a little bit of abstractions to make RenderArchetype more flexible in a way of loading data to GPU.
• RenderArchetype doesn't depend on exact type of buffer you use in shader
• I've seen some mentions about using StructuredBuffer<T> inside fragment shader and not using it inside vertex shader, so lower versions can be supported

I would recommend write a simple test mono / ecs system by looking how NSprites performs rendering. All hardcoded. To just figure out what setup of buffers and other things works for your case. Once we know what type of Buffers / etc we also need in NSprites, then we can think of how it can be integrated in.

[laicasaane]

Also did you remove flipping from shader or flickering just gone?

Yes, I removed it from the shader.

I've improved NSprties so now it can use any blittable component layout. So you can use now any count of blittable fields inside your component you use as properties.

As I understand we can now reduce the number of StructuredBuffer in the shader, right?

As a side note, maybe I will put up another test with this shader to see if SRP Batching can work for sprites on Unity 2022.2. (Unity has made it works for Unity 2023.1 though). If the result is positive, I might switch to the hybrid solution (GameObject + Sprite Renderer + this shader) in the meantime.
https://gist.github.com/laicasaane/b879b3dddcc477e897666db8116fc95b

[laicasaane]

You can check Window -> Entities -> NSprites and look at RenderArchetype list, if you see only one archetype then I'm right.

I've registered 61 sprite sheets and use 3 of them:
(screenshots captured in Unity Editor)

If you use sprite atlasing

Yes, these sprites here are put into a single SpriteAtlas.

[Antoshidza]

As I understand we can now reduce the number of StructuredBuffer in the shader, right?

Yep

As a side note, maybe I will put up another test with this shader to see if SRP Batching can work for sprites on Unity 2022.2. (Unity has made it works for Unity 2023.1 though). If the result is positive, I might switch to the hybrid solution (GameObject + Sprite Renderer + this shader) in the meantime.
https://gist.github.com/laicasaane/b879b3dddcc477e897666db8116fc95b

Would be nice to see SRP batching working with 2D sprites, because THIS is the source reason I even start to thinking about my own dots solution.

I've registered 61 sprite sheets and use 3 of them:
(screenshots captured in Unity Editor)
Yes, these sprites here are put into a single SpriteAtlas.

Wow, so many render archetypes! If you use same material and all in the single atlas (which means 1 solid texture) then you can use just 1 archetype instead of registering 1 per sprite sheet. The trick is change UVs through MainTexST component (Foundation authorings can do it)

Well! What we have is - in test different sheets have different render archetypes, and all sprites have no flip and any additional problematic properties like color we was trying to test. This means that values can be messed up in buffer and in your case it won't be visible at all. Can you, please, put all of this different sprites into the same archetype?

[laicasaane]

Wow, so many render archetypes! If you use same material and all in the single atlas (which means 1 solid texture) then you can use just 1 archetype instead of registering 1 per sprite sheet. The trick is change UVs through MainTexST component (Foundation authorings can do it)

Yes. Thanks to your foundation code I've learnt alot: my code is based on yours. But this is just a prototype so I can afford to have this many archetype. Optimization will come later when I have a concrete workflow for my project.

[Antoshidza]

Yes. Thanks to your foundation code I've learnt alot: my code is based on yours. But this is just a prototype so I can afford to have this many archetype. Optimization will come later when I have a concrete workflow for my project.

Yes, I understand this. But rendering more then 1 visual object per render gives us possibility to understand what may be going wrong.