HLSL Modify Tessellation shader to make equilateral triangles? - directx

Question

Details:
I'm in the proccess of procedural planet generation; so far I have done the dynamic LOD work, but my current software algorithm is very very slow. I decided to do it using DX11's new tessellation features instead.
Currently my sphere is a subdivided icosahedron. (20 sides all equilateral triangles)
Back when I was subdividing using my software algorithm, one triangle would be
split into four children across the midpoints of the parent forming the Hyrule symbol each time...like this: http://puu.sh/1xFIx
As you can see, each triangle subdivided created more and more equilateral triangles, i.e. each one was exactly the same shape.
But now that I am using the GPU to tessellate in HLSL, the result is definately not
what I am looking for: http://puu.sh/1xFx7
Questions:
Is there anything I can do in the Hull and Domain shaders to change the tessellation
so that it subdivides into sets of equilateral triangles like the first image?
Should I be using the geometry shader for something like this? If so, would it be
slower then the tessellator?

Answer 1

I tried using Tessellation Shader, but I encontred a problem: the domain shader only pass the uv coordinate (SV_DomainLocation) and the input patch for positionining the vertices, when the domain location for vertex is 0.3, 0.3, 0.3 (center vertex) is impossible to know the correct position because you need information about the other vertices or a index(x, y) of iteration that's not provided by the Domain Shader Stage.
because this problem I write the code in geometry shader, this shader is very limited for tessellations because the output stream cannot have a size bigger than 1024 bytes (in shader model 5.0). I implemented the calculation of vertex positions using the uv (like SV_DomainLocation) but this only tessellate the triangles, you must use part of your code to calculate added position in center of triangles to create the precise final result.
this is the code for equilateral triangles tessellation:
// required for array
#define MAX_ITERATIONS 5
void DrawTriangle(float4 p0, float4 p1, float4 p2, inout TriangleStream<VS_OUT> stream)
{
VS_OUT v0;
v0.pos = p0;
stream.Append(v0);
VS_OUT v1;
v1.pos = p1;
stream.Append(v1);
VS_OUT v2;
v2.pos = p2;
stream.Append(v2);
stream.RestartStrip();
}
[maxvertexcount(128)] // directx rule: maxvertexcount * sizeof(VS_OUT) <= 1024
void gs(triangle VS_OUT input[3], inout TriangleStream<VS_OUT> stream)
{
int itc = min(tess, MAX_ITERATIONS);
float fitc = itc;
float4 past_pos[MAX_ITERATIONS];
float4 array_pass[MAX_ITERATIONS];
for (int pi = 0; pi < MAX_ITERATIONS; pi++)
{
past_pos[pi] = float4(0, 0, 0, 0);
array_pass[pi] = float4(0, 0, 0, 0);
}
// -------------------------------------
// Tessellation kernel for the control points
for (int x = 0; x <= itc; x++)
{
float4 last;
for (int y = 0; y <= x; y++)
{
float2 seg = float2(x / fitc, y / fitc);
float3 uv;
uv.x = 1 - seg.x;
uv.z = seg.y;
uv.y = 1 - (uv.x + uv.z);
// ---------------------------------------
// Domain Stage
// uv Domain Location
// x,y IterationIndex
float4 fpos = input[0].pos * uv.x;
fpos += input[1].pos * uv.y;
fpos += input[2].pos * uv.z;
if (x > 0 && y > 0)
{
DrawTriangle(past_pos[y - 1], last, fpos, stream);
if (y < x)
{
// add adjacent triangle
DrawTriangle(past_pos[y - 1], fpos, past_pos[y], stream);
}
}
array_pass[y] = fpos;
last = fpos;
}
for (int i = 0; i < MAX_ITERATIONS; i++)
{
past_pos[i] = array_pass[i];
}
}
}