| Microsoft DirectX 8.1 (Visual Basic) |
Clearing the viewport resets the contents of the viewport rectangle on the render-target surface as well as the rectangle in the depth and stencil buffer surfaces, if specified. Typically, you clear the viewport before rendering a new frame to ensure that graphics and other data is ready to accept new rendered objects without displaying artifacts.
The Direct3DDevice8 Microsoft® Visual Basic® class offers the Direct3DDevice8.Clear method to clear the viewport. The method accepts one or more rectangles that define the area or areas on the surfaces being cleared. In cases where the scene being rendered includes motion throughout the entire viewport rectangle—in a first-person perspective game, for example—you might want to clear the entire viewport each frame. In this situation, you set the Count parameter to 1, and the ClearD3DRect parameter to a single-element array of D3DRECT variables, where the first and only element describes a rectangle that covers the entire area of the render-target surface.
The Clear method is flexible, and it provides support for clearing stencil bits within a depth buffer. The Flags parameter accepts three flags that determine how it clears the render target and any associated depth or stencil buffers. If you include the D3DCLEAR_TARGET flag, the method clears the viewport using an arbitrary RGBA color that you provide in the Color parameter (not the material color). If you include the D3DCLEAR_ZBUFFER flag, the method clears the depth buffer to an arbitrary depth you specify in Z:. 0.0 is the closest distance, and 1.0 is the farthest. Including the D3DCLEAR_STENCIL flag causes the method to reset the stencil bits to the value you provide in the Stencil parameter. You can use integers that range from 0 to 2n-1, where n is the stencil buffer bit depth.
In some situations, you might only be rendering to small portions of the render target and depth buffer surfaces. The clear methods also enable you to clear multiple areas of your surfaces in a single call. Do this by setting the Count parameter to the number of rectangles you want cleared, and an array of rectangles in the ClearD3DRect parameter.