What is Bindless

The fancy new way to do things in Vulkan / DX12 is bindless. This removes the limitations of the binding model allowing you to have access to far more textures and other resources within a shader and the ability to sample them from a dynamically provided identifier from buffers, vertex input, etc.

This allows a lot more versatility in your shaders, less CPU time spent binding textures and is the fundamental key to GPU driven rendering.

Bindless API

HLSL

The following methods are accessible from shaders:

Texture2D Bindless::GetTexture2D( int nIndex, bool srgb = false );
Texture3D Bindless::GetTexture3D( int nIndex );
TextureCube Bindless::GetTextureCube( int nIndex );
Texture2DArray Bindless::GetTexture2DArray( int nIndex );
TextureCubeArray Bindless::GetTextureCubeArray( int nIndex );

Additionally these methods are avaliable in compute shaders only:

RWTexture2D<float4> Bindless::GetRWTexture2D( int nIndex );
RWTexture3D<float4> Bindless::GetRWTexture3D( int nIndex );
RWTexture2DArray<float4> Bindless::GetRWTexture2DArray( int nIndex );

Example

Here's how you would create a structured buffer in C# containing texture indices and consume them in a shader.

struct TerrainMaterial
{
  public int ColorTextureIndex;
  public int NormalTextureIndex;
}

GpuBuffer<TerrainMaterial> TerrainMaterialsBuffer = new( 1 );
TerrainsMaterialBuffer.SetData( new[] {
  new TerrainMaterial {
    ColorTextureIndex = ColorTexture.Index,
    NormalTextureIndex = NormalTexture.Index
  },
  // ...
} );

SceneModel.Attributes.Set( "TerrainMaterials", TerrainMaterialsBuffer );

struct TerrainMaterial
{
  int ColorTextureIndex;
  int NormalTextureIndex;
}

StructuredBuffer<TerrainMaterial> TerrainMaterials < Attribute( "TerrainMaterials" ); >;

void SampleTerrain( float2 uv, in out float3 color, in out float3 normal )
{
  // Combine 4 dynamic terrain materials together
  for ( int i = 0; i < 4; i++ )
  {
    Texture2D ColorTexture = Bindless::GetTexture2D( TerrainMaterials[i].ColorTextureIndex, true ); // srgb
    Texture2D NormalTexture = Bindless::GetTexture2D( TerrainMaterials[i].NormalTextureIndex );
    
    color += ColorTexture.Sample( Sampler, uv );
    normal += NormalTexture.Sample( Sampler, uv );
  }
}

Non-uniform Resource Index

If your bindless resources index is going to vary across threads within a wave (this could happen if passed from a vertex input) you need to explicitly mark it as so otherwise you'll get undefined behavior.

Texture2D texture = Bindless::GetTexture2D( NonUniformResourceIndex( i.TextureIndex ) );