Hot-swap Bitmap

[Kjell]

In case you're using a lot of imported images, attached is a example that swaps out the data of a imported Bitmap at run-time ( to ensure that only 1 texture resides on the GPU at once ) .. press 1 or 2 on your keyboard to load a image.

K

[Rado1]

Nice trick to use files in this way. But are not embedded files loaded to memory as well? People would maybe appreciate runtime loading of bitmap files from file system.

[Kjell]

Hi Rado1,

But are not files loaded to memory as well?

The only thing that this method does is recycle the memory allocated for a texture on the GPU.

So if you'd for instance have a slideshow of 20 Bitmaps ( 512x288 ) by simply swapping MaterialTexture.Texture .. it would use 0.6MB of GPU RAM when the slideshow starts, 1.2MB after the 2nd image has been shown and 11MB once all images have been shown. Whereas using this technique you're always using only 0.6MB.

People would maybe appreciate runtime loading of bitmap files from file system.

Sure, you don't have to embed the file if you don't want to

K

[Lupo]

Hi,

Thanks for the example.

Would it be easy to load the bitmaps from an external file instead of embedded?

[Kjell]

Hi Lupo,

Would it be easy to load the bitmaps from an external file instead of embedded?

The principle is easy .. but since ZGE doesn't have any image decoders built-in ( aside from a JPG subset ) it really depends on the image format(s) that you want to support whether or not it's easy.

K

[Lupo]

Thanks for the answer.

I can remember the nano-jpeg embedded... I found the example project.

Thanks,
Luis.