HLSL sampler inside struct possible?

Question

I'm using the DirectX 9 effect framework.

I'd like to create a struct which contains a sampler like so:

struct Test
{
    texture tex;
    sampler texSamp = sampler_state
    {
        Texture = <tex>;
    };
};

However the shader compiler fails with:

internal error: this-relative Test::tex 'tex' found outsideof function scope

It seems like the idea of the this-relative reference is kind of working, but I need to somehow declare it inside a function, but I'm not sure how that could work, since declaring samplers inside functions doesn't work? Anyone have any ideas?

Marino Šimić Marino Šimić · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-30T14:36:46

I though that in HLSL everything is a value type. You know what implication this would have?

Each time you assigned this struct to some other variable you would do a copy of the sampler. There are limitation in shading language on many things like number of samplings, not only number of samplers.

HLSL sampler inside struct possible?

2 Answers