Declaring array/buffer properties in ShaderGraph or VFXGraph; why not?

I am not an expert in this, but I often think of situations where I would really want to declare something like a StructuredBuffer in my shaders, or an array of points in VFX Graph. It's often way more convenient than storing data in textures, and very useful for doing stuff with compute shaders, etc...

Is there a reason why it's preferable not to have the option? Are textures always a better idea? Or would it be too difficult to add this feature?

 

Hardware limitation - StructuredBuffer require SM5 (full support) SM4 (pixel and compute shaders), opposite - textures is basic thing which runs on every shader models and hardwares

 

Thanks for the explanation. I do feel like the HDRP could/should have this feature though, since it kinda has the mission statement of "not being limited by old common-denomitator hardware or tech"

 

Yep, definitely for things like HDRP it'll be good feature

 

Any updates on this? Did you found a way to read buffers on shadergraph? i dont understand why is this not possibl!

 

In SG you can declare arrays in a custom fuction node outside the function.
However, for accesing and work with the data you also need to do that in the custom function, since Shadergraph has no datatype for arrays or buffers, nor has it any way to iterate throug arrays or buffers.

And in the beta of 2021.2 vfx graph has a datatype for buffers for (floats, vectors and matrices)
Cheers

 

for VFXGraph you can use GraphicsBuffer now.