Name

    ARB_shader_stencil_export

Name Strings

    GL_ARB_shader_stencil_export

Contributors

    Graham Sellers, AMD
    Andrew Lewycky, AMD
    Mais Alnasser, AMD

Contact

    Graham Sellers, AMD (graham.sellers 'at' amd.com)

Notice

    Copyright (c) 2010-2013 The Khronos Group Inc. Copyright terms at
        http://www.khronos.org/registry/speccopyright.html

Specification Update Policy

    Khronos-approved extension specifications are updated in response to
    issues and bugs prioritized by the Khronos OpenGL Working Group. For
    extensions which have been promoted to a core Specification, fixes will
    first appear in the latest version of that core Specification, and will
    eventually be backported to the extension document. This policy is
    described in more detail at
        https://www.khronos.org/registry/OpenGL/docs/update_policy.php

Status

    Complete. Approved by the ARB on June 9, 2010.
    Approved by the Khronos Board of Promoters on July 23, 2010.

Version

    Last Modified Date:         05/20/2010
    Author Revision:            6

Number

    ARB Extension #106

Dependencies

    OpenGL 1.0 is required.

    ARB_fragment_shader is required.

    This extension is written against the OpenGL Shading Language Specification
    version 1.40.05

Overview

    In OpenGL, the stencil test is a powerful mechanism to selectively discard
    fragments based on the content of the stencil buffer. However, facilites
    to update the content of the stencil buffer are limited to operations such
    as incrementing the existing value, or overwriting with a fixed reference
    value.

    This extension provides a mechanism whereby a shader may generate the
    stencil reference value per invocation. When stencil testing is enabled,
    this allows the test to be performed against the value generated in the
    shader. When the stencil operation is set to GL_REPLACE, this allows a
    value generated in the shader to be written to the stencil buffer directly.

IP Status

    No known IP claims.

New Procedures and Functions

    None.

New Tokens

    None.

Additions to Chapter 2 of the OpenGL 2.1 Specification (OpenGL Operation)

    None.

Additions to Chapter 3 of the OpenGL 2.1 Specification (Rasterization)

    None.

Additions to Chapter 4 of the OpenGL 2.1 Specification (Per-Fragment Operations
and the Framebuffer)

    None.

Additions to Chapter 5 of the OpenGL 2.1 Specification (Special
Functions)

    None.

Additions to Chapter 6 of the OpenGL 2.1 Specification (State and
State Requests)

    None.

Additions to the OpenGL Shading Language Version 1.40.05

    Add a new Section 3.3.x, GL_ARB_shader_stencil_export Extension (p. 11)

    3.3.x GL_ARB_shader_stencil_export

    To use the GL_ARB_shader_stencil_export extension in a shader it must be
    enabled using the #extension directive.

    The shading language preprocessor #define GL_ARB_shader_stencil_export will
    be defined to 1 if the GL_ARB_shader_stencil_export extension is supported.

    Modify Section 7.2, "Fragment Shader Special Variables":

    Add to the list of built-in special variables, p.63:

        out int gl_FragStencilRefARB;

    Modify the paragraph beginning, "Fragment shaders output values to the
    OpenGL pipeline..." to:

    Fragment shaders output values to the OpenGL pipeline using the built-in
    variables gl_FragColor, gl_FragData, gl_FragDepth, and gl_FragStencilRefARB
    unless the discard statement is executed. Both gl_FragColor and gl_FragData
    are deprecated; the preferred usage is to explicitly declare these outputs
    in the fragment shader using the out storage qualifier.

    Insert a new paragraph after the paragraph describing gl_FragDepth:

    Writing to gl_FragStencilRefARB will establish the stencil reference value
    for the fragment being processed. Only the least significant bits of the
    integer gl_FragStencilRefARB are considered up to the value of STENCIL_BITS
    and higher order bits are discarded. If stencil testing is enabled and no
    shader writes to gl_FragStencilRefARB, then the fixed function value for
    stencil reference will be used as the fragment's stencil reference value.
    If a shader statically assignes a value to gl_FragStencilRefARB, and there
    is an execution path through the shader that does not set
    gl_FragStencilRefARB, then the value of the fragment's stencil reference
    value may be undefined for executions of the shader that take that path.
    That is, if the set of linked shaders statically contain a write to
    gl_FragStencilRefARB, then it is responsible for always writing it.

    Modify the first paragraph on p.64:

    If a shader executes the discard keyword, the fragment is discarded, and
    the values of any user-defined fragment outputs, gl_FragDepth, gl_FragColor,
    gl_FragData, and gl_FragStencilRefARB become irrelevant.

Additions to the AGL/GLX/WGL Specifications

    None.

GLX Protocol

    None.

Errors

    None.

New State

    None.

New Implementation Dependent State

    None.

Issues

    1) Should gl_FragStencilRefARB be initialized to the current stencil
       reference value on input to the fragment shader?

       RESOLVED: No. gl_FragStencilRefARB is write-only. If the current stencil
       reference value is required in a shader, the application should place
       it in a uniform.

    2) Is it possible to output the stencil mask from the shader?

       RESOLVED: No.

    3) Is the global stencil mask still applied?

       RESOLVED: Yes. The mask is global as there is no way to export the
       stencil mask from the shader.

    4) How is two-sided stencil handled? How do we export front and back
       stencil references?

       RESOLVED: There is only one export from the shader. However, two sided
       stencil reference generation may be achived as:

          if (gl_FrontFacing)
            gl_FragStencilRefARB = foo;
          else
            gl_FragStencilRefARB = bar;

       If both front and back stencil reference values are needed in a single
       shader, user defined uniforms may be used.

    5) If the value written to gl_FragStencilRefARB is outside of the range of
       values representable by the stencil buffer, what happens?

       RESOLVED: The additional bits are discarded. This is logical as the
       stencil mask is still applied and its bit-depth is that of the stencil
       buffer. If clamping is desired, this should be performed in the shader.

    6) Why is gl_FragStencilRef signed?

       For consistency with the ref parameter to glStencilFunc, which is a
       GLint. It is masked with the stencil mask value, so it makes no practical
       difference whether it's signed or unsigned unless the implementation
       supports 32-bit stencil buffers. An interesting note is that the GL
       specification states that the comparison made in the stencil test
       is unsigned.

Revision History

    Rev.    Date      Author    Changes
    ----  --------    --------  -----------------------------------------

     6    05/20/2010  gsellers  Add issue 6.
     5    04/07/2010  gsellers  Remove erroneous language stating that
                                gl_FragStencilRefARB is initialized to the fixed
                                function reference value.
     4    09/27/2009  gsellers  Update issues 1, 4 and 5.
     3    07/16/2009  gsellers  Address two-sided stencil references.
                                Add issues 3, 4 and 5.
     2    07/14/2009  gsellers  Add ARB suffix to gl_FragStencilRef. Resolve (1)
     1    07/10/2009  gsellers  Initial draft.