Objects and Reference Counting

Whenever an object is created, its reference count is increased. Each time an application creates a child of an object or a method returns a pointer to an object, the system increases the reference count for that object. The object is not deleted until its reference count reaches zero.

Applications should need to keep track of the reference count for a single object only: the root of the scene. The system keeps track of the other reference counts automatically. Applications should be able to simply release the scene, the viewport, and the device when they clean up before exiting. (When your application releases the viewport, the system automatically takes care of the camera's references.) An application could theoretically release a viewport without releasing the device, such as if it needed to add a new viewport to the device, but whenever an application releases a device, it should release the viewport as well.

The reference count of a child or visual object increases whenever it is added to a frame. When you use the IDirect3DRMFrame::AddChild method to move a child from one parent to another, the system handles the reference counting automatically.

After your application loads a visual object into a scene, the scene handles the reference counting for the visual object. The application no longer needs the visual object and can release it.

Creating and applying a wrap does not increase the reference count of any objects, because wrapping is really just a convenient method of calculating texture coordinates.