Revisited: How to create a D3DTexture from an embeded image resource.

I have continued to play around with loading embeded resource data files and have come up with a alternative way to create a D3DTexture from an embeded resource image. This new method seems more apropreate. (To me at least :p )

If you are wondering why I am loading embeded resource images rather than simply loading and creating a D3D texture from a file, it is because external files can be lost and can result in you app not being able to run. Not that I will be doing this for every app I write!

    Protected Friend Function LoadResource(ByVal ResourceName As String) As IO.MemoryStream

        Dim ResourceStream As IO.Stream

        ResourceStream = Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly.GetManifestResourceStream(ResourceName)

        If ResourceStream Is Nothing Then Return Nothing



        Dim byts(CInt(ResourceStream.Length - 1)) As Byte

        Dim Len As Integer = ResourceStream.Read(byts, 0, CInt(ResourceStream.Length))



        Dim MemStream As New IO.MemoryStream(byts, 0, Len)

        Return MemStream

    End Function




    Protected Friend Function LoadResourceImage(ByVal ResourceImageName As String) As Direct3D.Texture

        Dim Mem As IO.MemoryStream

        Mem = LoadResource(ResourceImageName)

       

        ' attempt to load/create image we saved to memory stream

        Dim Tex As Direct3D.Texture

        Tex = Direct3D.TextureLoader.FromStream(mobjGraphics.Device, Mem)



        ' done with varibles

        Mem.Close()

        Mem = Nothing

      

        ' return reference to texture

        Return Tex

    End Function

How to create a D3DTexture from an embeded image resource.

I have added a cool little code snip that demonstrates a way of loading a image that was added to a project and declared "Embeded Resource" at design time, and returns a newly created D3D texture.
The code is written in vb.net and DX9.

Load Resource Texture

Private Function LoadResourceImage(ByVal ResourceImageName As String) As Direct3D.Texture

        Dim Mem As New IO.MemoryStream()

        Dim Img As Bitmap



        ' attempt to create bitmap from embeded resource

        Img = New Bitmap(Me.GetType, ResourceImageName)

        ' save image to memory stream

        Img.Save(Mem, Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Png)

        ' seek to start of stream

        Mem.Seek(0, IO.SeekOrigin.Begin)



        ' attempt to load/create image we saved to memory stream

        Dim Tex As Direct3D.Texture

        Tex = Direct3D.TextureLoader.FromStream(mobjGraphics.Device, Mem)



        ' done with varibles

        Mem.Close()

        Mem = Nothing

        Img.Dispose()

        Img = Nothing



        ' return reference to texture

        Return Tex

End Function