Managed DirectX® 9 Kick Start: Graphics and Game Programming

Using the Vertex and Index Buffers

Vertex buffers are the main data structure used by Direct3D to store vertices, while the Index buffers are the same for indices. These classes derive from the Resource class, and thus inherit those methods, plus add a few of their own.

The first new property is a description of the buffer. The structure returned from this property will tell you everything you need to know about how the buffer was created, including the format, the usage, the memory pool, the size, and the vertex format. While it may be true that you would already know this information if you were creating the buffers yourself, this is very useful information if you are simply receiving the buffers from an external source that you know nothing ...