Multiple Texture Blending

With the introduction of the IDirect3D3 and IDirect3DDevice3 interfaces, Direct3D can now blend as many as eight textures onto primitives in a single pass. The use of multiple texture blending can profoundly increase the frame rate of Direct3D applications. Applications employ multiple texture blending to apply textures, shadows, specular lighting, diffuse lighting, and other special effects in a single pass.

To blend multiple textures, applications assign textures into the set of current textures, and then create blending stages. The topics in the following list present information on how these steps are accomplished:

• Texture Stages and the Texture Blending Cascade
• Texture Blending Operations and Arguments
• Assigning the Current Textures
• Creating Blending Stages
• Legacy Blending Modes and Texture Stages