Life Cycle of HOOPS Luminate Objects

There are two distinct mechanisms in HOOPS Luminate to manage the life and memory of objects that are created by the application. These mechanisms differ depending on how the object was initially created:

  1. Objects created using RED::Factory::CreateInstance are following a Graph Based Destruction Method, as seen below.

  2. Objects created directly using the RED::IResourceManager interface are following a Shared Resource Destruction Method as seen below.

It’s also very important to know that in HOOPS Luminate, destruction orders are not immediate. Except for images - which are mostly synchronous objects - all destruction orders of objects that are using transactions are postponed until the transaction is closed using RED::IResourceManager::EndState.

Graph Based Destruction Method

The graph based destruction method applies to:

  • The resource manager

  • Windows

  • Viewpoints

  • Viewpoint render lists

  • Shapes

../../../_images/graph_destruction_method.png

An example application object graph

The one and unique rule about object destruction here is that the destruction of an object will cause the destruction of all children objects in its proprietary sub-graph. This means that any object that is destroyed will destroy all its children objects that are not linked elsewhere, ‘elsewhere’ being not destroyed. Let’s see how this applies to the schema above:

  • If the resource manager is destroyed, everything is destroyed: using a single call, all HOOPS Luminate data gets released.

  • If window #A or #B is being released, here’s what remains alive:

../../../_images/graph_destruction_method_window.png

The fact that ‘viewpoint #2’ is linked to both windows prevent it to be destroyed (of course if we consider one of the two destruction orders. If both windows are destroyed at the same time, everything is destroyed). Consequently shapes below ‘viewpoint #2’ are not destroyed.

  • If destruction occurs at the viewpoint level, for instance deleting ‘viewpoint #2’ and ‘viewpoint #4’, here’s what remains alive:

../../../_images/graph_destruction_method_viewpoint.png

‘Shape #2’ was linked to both viewpoints numbers 1 and 2, so it survives. Similarly, the destruction order of ‘viewpoint #4’ does not propagate further down, because ‘transform #4’ is linked to ‘viewpoint #3’ which survives the operation.

Shared Resource Destruction Method

The creation and destruction mechanism for resources created through the RED::IResourceManager interface completely differs from the previous one detailed above. All resources created through the resource manager are shared resources. This comprises:

  • Images

  • Materials

  • Fonts

Are these objects are shared among shapes in different scene graphs. The one and unique rule that applies here is that its the responsibility of the calling application to ensure that a shared resource is no longer used in the cluster before releasing it. Therefore, the calling application must be aware of how its resources are being used in its data and has to do the proper management job for these resources.

Releasing shared resources that are still in use can produce unexpected results.

The Data Release Timer Option

This is a special engine option, called RED::OPTIONS_DATA_RELEASE_TIMER. This option controls the life cycle of internal GPU buffers used by the engine. It may be helpful to change its value in the case of multiple graphics intensive windows used in the application.