how to describe packed_float3 in Metal vertex shader MTLVertexAttributeDescriptor? - metal

Question

I am passing an array of structs to my Metal shader vertex function. The struct looks like this:
struct Vertex {
var x,y,z: Float // position data
var r,g,b,a: Float // color data
var s,t: Float // texture coordinates
var nX,nY,nZ: Float // normal
func floatBuffer() -> [Float] {
return [x,y,z,r,g,b,a,s,t,nX,nY,nZ]
}
};
The floatBuffer function is used to assemble the vertices into one big array of Floats. I am able to pass this into my shader function by using a struct definition which uses "packed" data types, like this:
struct VertexIn {
packed_float3 position;
packed_float4 color;
packed_float2 texCoord;
packed_float3 normal;
};
vertex VertexOut basic_vertex(
const device VertexIn* vertex_array [[ buffer(0) ]],
.
.
.
This works. However, I would like to know how to do the same thing using MTLVertexAttributeDescriptors and the associated syntax. Right now I am getting mangled polygons, presumably because of the byte alignment differences with float3 and packed_float3?
This is how I'm trying to define it now and getting the garbage polygons. I got an error that "packed_float3" is not valid for attributes, so I was trying to figure out how to make regular float3, float4, etc work.
struct VertexIn {
float3 position [[attribute(RayVertexAttributePosition)]];
float4 color [[attribute(RayVertexAttributeColor)]];
float2 texCoord [[attribute(RayVertexAttributeTexCoord)]];
float3 normal [[attribute(RayVertexAttributeNormal)]];
};
class func buildMetalVertexDescriptor() -> MTLVertexDescriptor {
let mtlVertexDescriptor = MTLVertexDescriptor()
var offset = 0
mtlVertexDescriptor.attributes[RayVertexAttribute.position.rawValue].format = MTLVertexFormat.float3
mtlVertexDescriptor.attributes[RayVertexAttribute.position.rawValue].offset = offset
mtlVertexDescriptor.attributes[RayVertexAttribute.position.rawValue].bufferIndex = RayBufferIndex.positions.rawValue
offset += 3*MemoryLayout<Float>.stride
mtlVertexDescriptor.attributes[RayVertexAttribute.color.rawValue].format = MTLVertexFormat.float4
mtlVertexDescriptor.attributes[RayVertexAttribute.color.rawValue].offset = offset
mtlVertexDescriptor.attributes[RayVertexAttribute.color.rawValue].bufferIndex = RayBufferIndex.positions.rawValue
offset += MemoryLayout<float4>.stride
mtlVertexDescriptor.attributes[RayVertexAttribute.texCoord.rawValue].format = MTLVertexFormat.float2
mtlVertexDescriptor.attributes[RayVertexAttribute.texCoord.rawValue].offset = offset
mtlVertexDescriptor.attributes[RayVertexAttribute.texCoord.rawValue].bufferIndex = RayBufferIndex.positions.rawValue
offset += MemoryLayout<float2>.stride
mtlVertexDescriptor.attributes[RayVertexAttribute.normal.rawValue].format = MTLVertexFormat.float3
mtlVertexDescriptor.attributes[RayVertexAttribute.normal.rawValue].offset = offset
mtlVertexDescriptor.attributes[RayVertexAttribute.normal.rawValue].bufferIndex = RayBufferIndex.positions.rawValue
offset += 3*MemoryLayout<Float>.stride
print("stride \(offset)")
mtlVertexDescriptor.layouts[RayBufferIndex.positions.rawValue].stride = offset
mtlVertexDescriptor.layouts[RayBufferIndex.positions.rawValue].stepRate = 1
mtlVertexDescriptor.layouts[RayBufferIndex.positions.rawValue].stepFunction = MTLVertexStepFunction.perVertex
return mtlVertexDescriptor
}
Notice that I specify the first attribute as a float3, but I specify an offset of 3 floats instead of the 4 that a float3 would normally use. But it isn't enough, apparently. I'm wondering how to set up a MTLVertexDescriptor and the shader struct with attributes so that it handles the 'packed' data from my structs?
Thanks very much.

Answer 1

The key is in this part of your question: "Notice that I specify the first attribute as a float3, but I specify an offset of 3 floats instead of the 4 that a float3 would normally use".
The SIMD float3 type takes up 16 bytes, it has the same memory layout as the non-packed Metal float3 type. So when you set the offset to only 3*MemoryLayout.stride you are missing the last 4 bytes which are still present causing the next field to pull from those extra bytes and for the rest of the data to be offset.
To really use packed types to transfer data to Metal (or any graphics API) you either have to stick with what you were doing before and specify x, y, z in three separate Floats in an array, or you have to define your own struct like this:
struct Vector3 {
var x: Float
var y: Float
var z: Float
}
Swift doesn't have any guarantees that this struct will be three Floats packed closely together, but for now and the foreseeable future it works and will be 12 bytes in size on most platforms.
If you want to be able to do vector operations on a struct like this then I would suggest looking for a library that defines types like these to save yourself some time as you will run into the same types of problems with 3x3 matrices also.
I ran into the same problems so I ended up rolling my own:
https://github.com/jkolb/Swiftish