✅ Drawing WPF image from byte array
Is there any way in wpf to render an image directly from a byte array? eg accessing DirectX? i want something like glTexSubImage2D where an array can be provided and it will simply be copied to the gpu for rendering. i can't use a WriteableBitmap because the memory safety is too performance limiting for my use. (i'll be writing and reading large areas to it 60 times a second)
4 Replies
Yes and no. You're asking two separate questions.
You can render directly to a wpf control by drawing to it's bitmap handle in a paint event. To be clear, that's how it works in win forms at least. Wpf is slightly different but it's the same idea.
But if you want to access the GPU, then wpf will not give you any practical ways to do that. You're better off using GL, DirectX, or vulkan.
got it, thanks. sorry for the confusion, my question should have been more along the lines of "can i access the directx context that wpf has already"
i assume the direct rendering you are talking about is
OnRender(DrawingContext dc)? seems like it needs an ImageSource which would be too slow for the constant updates i would need to provide itYou probably can, but if you're doing that, you're better off just rendering to a DX surface.
What are you trying to draw?
just a 2d 32bit rgba texture
directly or at least close to direct as possible, from a byte array, since performance is critical and i don't want to make new allocations, thread checking, streams etc that ImageSource's and their inheritors do
i've looked around a bit more and wpf just doesn't seem to have anything that low level which is fair enough, i'll just use a 3rd party library i think 🙂