TSL: Introduce uniformTexture() and uniformCubeTexture()

[sunag]

Related issue: #30849, Closes #31173

Description

The introduction of uniformTexture() should help more experienced developers migrate their shaders to TSL, since it more closely resembles the GLSL style.

Now the texture() function can also sample uniformTexture() as in the example below.

const myUniform = uniformTexture( textureA );
material.colorNode = texture( myUniform, uv() );

setTimeout( () => {

	// switch texture after 1 second
	myUniform.value = textureB;

}, 1000 );

Another example creating a helper function to get the material map as uniform.

const materialUniformTexture = ( property ) => uniformTexture().onObjectUpdate( ( { material } ) => material[ property ] );

const mapUniform = materiaUniformTexture( 'map' );

material.map = textureA;
material.colorNode = texture( mapUniform, uv() );

setTimeout( () => {

	// switch texture after 1 second
	material.map = textureB;

}, 1000 );

/cc @Makio64

[github-actions]

📦 Bundle size

Full ESM build, minified and gzipped.

	Before	After	Diff
WebGL	337.26 78.64	337.26 78.64	+0 B +0 B
WebGPU	552.95 153.31	553.51 153.43	+561 B +122 B
WebGPU Nodes	552.3 153.16	552.86 153.28	+561 B +123 B

🌳 Bundle size after tree-shaking

Minimal build including a renderer, camera, empty scene, and dependencies.

	Before	After	Diff
WebGL	468.44 113.28	468.44 113.28	+0 B +0 B
WebGPU	627.97 170	628.45 170.12	+484 B +123 B
WebGPU Nodes	582.82 159.33	583.3 159.47	+484 B +139 B

[Makio64]

@sunag it's very cool ! I didnt understand the use of onObjectUpdate but it's so powerful!

Just a quick question , when we do this approach, it create different version of the material or it re-assign the uniform between both drawcall?

Also is it internally optimized so if I render material1 textureA / material1 textureB one after the other it only change the uniform ?

Thanks !

[sunag]

Just a quick question , when we do this approach, it create different version of the material or it re-assign the uniform between both drawcall?
Also is it internally optimized so if I render material1 textureA / material1 textureB one after the other it only change the uniform ?

The approach you saw above only updates the uniform according to the object/material that will be rendered, it does not create different versions of the material.

[Makio64]

So just to confirm if i have materialA and materialB with each fews models its more performant for the webgpurenderer to do :

renderOrder 1 : 
meshA.materialA
meshC.materialA
meshE.materialA

renderOrder 2:
meshB.materialB
meshD.materialB

instead of

no renderOrder :
meshA.materialA
meshB.materialB
meshC.materialA
meshD.materialB
meshE.materialA

note in above example lets say each mesh have a different map for example.

[sunag]

The first option, with order, in order to optimize commands for gpu.