Rendering API documentation

[anonymous_user_6bd6b03e]

Hello Epic,

The documentation on the rendering architecture of the UE4 is almost missing, so anything related to graphics development for UE4 is severely limited (simply because it takes a lot of time to manually read the engine source to try to understand how it works). A documentation is necessary.

However, the most important part of that is not necessarily a doc for each function but rather a document explaining how UE render things, how shaders are handled, what classes are doing, how to correctly manage resources, how does the material system works at C++ level, etc…
The aim of such a document is that at the end the reader knows how to put things in the render thread, how to write shaders, how to render specific things.

Would it be possible to have that ?

Thanks in advance,

[anonymous_user_89b5ed72]

What you are describing sounds like this section:

Graphics Programming

Is that what you were looking for? I’m sure it is not exhaustive, but letting us know what you feel is missing would help target our efforts.

Thanks!

[anonymous_user_6bd6b03e]

Thanks for the answer !

While the page you linked contains some information, it is still lacking a part about how to use those things (well, when it’s relevant). I also find it should be a bit more thorough.
Also, the page about shader development show how to write a shader resource, how to enable debugging for them, but not how they interact with meshes or how to use them.

For example, after reading these pages, I still don’t know how to make the engine draw 1 specific mesh with 1 shader (vs+ps)… Can shaders be treated as FMaterials or FMaterialRenderProxies ?