How to modify a Texture pixels from a compute shader in unity? - unity3d

Question

I stumbled upon a strange problem in vuforia.When i request a camera image using CameraDevice.GetCameraImage(mypixelformat), the image returned is both flipped sideways and rotated 180 deg. Because of this, to obtain a normal image i have to first rotate the image and then flip it sideways.The approach i am using is simply iterating over pixels of the image and modifying them.This approach is very poor performance wise.Below is the code:
Texture2D image;
CameraDevice cameraDevice = Vuforia.CameraDevice.Instance;
Vuforia.Image vufImage = cameraDevice.GetCameraImage(pixelFormat);
image = new Texture2D(vufImage.Width, vufImage.Height);
vufImage.CopyToTexture(image);
Color32[] colors = image.GetPixels32();
System.Array.Reverse(colors, 0, colors.Length); //rotate 180deg
image.SetPixels32(colors); //apply rotation
image = FlipTexture(image); //flip sideways
//***** THE FLIP TEXTURE METHOD *******//
private Texture2D FlipTexture(Texture2D original, bool upSideDown = false)
{
Texture2D flipped = new Texture2D(original.width, original.height);
int width = original.width;
int height = original.height;
for (int col = 0; col < width; col++)
{
for (int row = 0; row < height; row++)
{
if (upSideDown)
{
flipped.SetPixel(row, (width - 1) - col, original.GetPixel(row, col));
}
else
{
flipped.SetPixel((width - 1) - col, row, original.GetPixel(col, row));
}
}
}
flipped.Apply();
return flipped;
}
To improve the performance i want to somehow schedule these pixel operations on the GPU, i have heard that a compute shader can be used, but i have no idea where to start.Can someone please help me write the same operations in a compute shader so that the GPU can handle them, Thankyou!.

Answer 1

The whole compute shader are new for me too, but i took the occasion to research it a little bit for myself too. The following works for flipping a texture vertically (rotating and flipping horizontally should be just a vertical flip).
Someone might have a more elaborate solution for you, but maybe this is enough to get you started.
The Compute shader code:
#pragma kernel CSMain
// Create a RenderTexture with enableRandomWrite flag and set it
// with cs.SetTexture
RWTexture2D<float4> Result;
Texture2D<float4> ImageInput;
float2 flip;
[numthreads(8,8,1)]
void CSMain (uint3 id : SV_DispatchThreadID)
{
flip = float2(512 , 1024) - id.xy ;
Result[id.xy] = float4(ImageInput[flip].x, ImageInput[flip].y, ImageInput[flip].z, 1.0);
}
and called from any script:
public void FlipImage()
{
int kernelHandle = shader.FindKernel("CSMain");
RenderTexture tex = new RenderTexture(512, 1024, 24);
tex.enableRandomWrite = true;
tex.Create();
shader.SetTexture(kernelHandle, "Result", tex);
shader.SetTexture(kernelHandle, "ImageInput", myTexture);
shader.Dispatch(kernelHandle, 512/8 , 1024 / 8, 1);
RenderTexture.active = tex;
result.ReadPixels(new Rect(0, 0, tex.width, tex.height), 0, 0);
result.Apply();
}
This takes an input Texture2D, flips it in the shader, applies it to a RenderTexture and to a Texture2D, whatever you need.
Note that the image sizes are hardcoded in my instance and should be replaced by whatever size you need. (for within the shader use shader.SetInt(); )