// the pixels, e.g. mirror, won't need to care, and can set this
// to false. If so, the input gamma will be undefined.
//
- // Also see the note on needs_many_samples(), below.
+ // Also see the note on needs_texture_bounce(), below.
virtual bool needs_linear_light() const { return true; }
// Whether this effect expects its input to be in the sRGB
// Again, most effects will want this.
virtual bool needs_srgb_primaries() const { return true; }
- // Whether this effect expects to be sampling many times from
- // its input. If this is true, the framework will not chain the
+ // Whether this effect expects its input to come directly from
+ // a texture. If this is true, the framework will not chain the
// input from other effects, but will store the results of the
// chain to a temporary (RGBA fp16) texture and let this effect
// sample directly from that.
//
- // Note that if you do _not_ set this, and do not sample on
- // whole pixels (ie. you request linear filtering), it is undefined
- // whether that filtering happen in linear gamma or not.
- // It _could_ be (for instance in the case where the input is sRGB
- // and your GPU applies gamma expansion before filtering), but you
- // have no such guarantee. For most uses, however, this will be fine.
- virtual bool needs_many_samples() const { return false; }
+ // There are two good reasons why you might want to set this:
+ //
+ // 1. You are sampling more than once from the input,
+ // in which case computing all the previous steps might
+ // be more expensive than going to a memory intermediate.
+ // 2. You rely on previous effects, possibly including gamma
+ // expansion, to happen pre-filtering instead of post-filtering.
+ // (This is only relevant if you actually need the filtering; if
+ // you sample on whole input pixels only, it makes no difference.)
+ //
+ // Note that in some cases, you might get post-filtered gamma expansion
+ // even when setting this option. More specifically, if you are the
+ // first effect in the chain, and the GPU is doing sRGB gamma
+ // expansion, it is undefined (from OpenGL's side) whether expansion
+ // happens pre- or post-filtering. For most uses, however,
+ // either will be fine.
+ virtual bool needs_texture_bounce() const { return false; }
// Whether this effect expects mipmaps or not. If you set this to
// true, you will be sampling with bilinear filtering; if not,