ShaderFactory

The ShaderFactory class provides a createShader() method that caches and reuses Shader resources.

Compiling shaders is costly, and may block the render pipeline on some devices. Using a shader factory allows applications to more easily consolidate shaders with identical properties, minimizing the amount of time spent compiling shaders.

The ShaderFactory will return the requested shader, creating it the first time, and then re-using a cached version if it is requested more than once. An application that tends to create multiple identical Shader instances should consider replacing calls to device.createShader(...) with calls to shaderFactory.createShader(...).

It is possible to create multiple shader factories, but normally applications rely on the default factory that is created for each device.

Usage

An application that tends to create multiple identical Shader instances should consider replacing calls to device.createShader(...) with calls to shaderFactory.createShader(...).

To deduplicate Shader instances, simply replace existing shader creation

const shader = device.createShader({stage: 'vertex', source: '...'}));

with similar calls to the default shader factory

import {ShaderFactory} from '@luma.gl/engine';
const shaderFactory = ShaderFactory.getDefaultShaderFactory(device);
const shader = shaderFactory.createShader({stage: 'vertex', source: '...'});

To prevent the cache from growing too big, an optional release() method is also available.

shaderFactory.release(shader);

Shaders are destroyed by the factory automatically after all users of the shader have released their references. To clean up unused shaders and avoid memory leaks, every call to createShader must be paired with a corresponding call to release at some later time.

Static Methods

ShaderFactory.getDefaultShaderFactory()

Returns the default shader factory for a device.

ShaderFactory.getDefaultShaderFactory(device: Device): ShaderFactory

While it is possible to create multiple factories, most applications will use the default factory.

Methods

createShader()

Returns a Shader configured with the properties specified.

createShader(props: ShaderProps): Shader

If one is already cached, return it, otherwise create and cache a new one.

release()

release(shader: Shader): void

Indicates that a shader is no longer in use. Each call to createShader() increments a reference count, and only when all references to a shader are released, the shader is destroyed and deleted from the cache.