Painter

Overview

The Painter (Halley::Painter) executes the drawing on the currently bound Render Target, using the currently bound Camera. It can't be instantiated by the user, and must always be obtained via the Render Context. Painter is a virtual class that is implemented by the Video API.

Most of the time, you won't use most of the methods on Painter, instead relying on Sprites, Text Rendering and the Sprite Painter. However, a few methods (such as clear) are useful.

The painter provides dynamic batching of vertices and sprites. When you submit data for the painter, instead of drawing it immediately, it is held in a queue. Subsequent data, if compatible with the existing data (typically meaning having identical materials) will be appended to the queue. If the data is not compatible, existing data is flushed, a new queue is started, and the process continues. This allows Halley to drastically reduce the number of draw calls, without user interaction.

Methods

clear

virtual void Painter::clear(Colour colour) = 0

Clears the target to the selected colour. Useful at the start of rendering.

flush

void Painter::flush()

Forces the rendering of any pending vertices.