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Walkthrough: Capturing Graphics Information

  • Article

Applies to: yesVisual Studio noVisual Studio for Mac

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

This walkthrough demonstrates how to use the Visual Studio Graphics Diagnostics to manually capture graphics information from a Direct3D app.

This walkthrough illustrates these tasks:

  • Hooking Graphics Diagnostics to your app

  • Capturing graphics information

Capturing graphics information

To use the Graphics Diagnostics tools, you first have to capture the graphics information that it relies on. To enable capture, use the Start Diagnostics command to hook Graphics Diagnostics to your app when it starts.

To enable the capture of graphics information after a project or solution is loaded

  1. In Visual Studio, load a project or solution file for the app that you want to capture graphics information from.

  2. On the Graphics Diagnostics toolbar, choose Start Diagnostics.

To enable the capture of graphics information without loading a project or solution

  1. On the menu bar, choose File, Open, Project/Solution. The Open Project dialog box appears.

  2. Instead of a project or solution file, specify the executable file for the app that you want to capture graphics information from, and then choose Open.

  3. On the menu bar, choose Debug, Graphics, Start Diagnostics.

    After you start the app and it is rendering frames, you can capture graphics information.

To capture graphics information

  • On the Graphics Diagnostics toolbar, choose the Capture button. Graphics capture button icon

    -or-

    With the app in focus, press Print Screen.

    Each time you capture information about a frame, Graphics Diagnostics records the Direct3D events and associated state and adds that data to a graphics log. A new graphics log is created for each Graphics Diagnostics session. For information about graphics logs, see Overview.

Next Steps

This walkthrough demonstrated how to capture graphics information manually. As a next step, consider this option:

  • Learn how to analyze captured graphics information using the Graphics Diagnostics tools. See Overview.

See also