HLSL Gaussian blur pixelshader: blur is not occurring

Question

I am trying to use postprocessing to create a gaussian blur, however, no blur is to be seen, what am I doing wrong?

I have included the full code at the bottom of this post in a google docs link, but here are the most important bits and pieces.

Part of the xna draw method:

RenderTarget2D renderTarget;
renderTarget = new RenderTarget2D(this.device, screenWidth, screenHeight, true, pp.BackBufferFormat, pp.DepthStencilFormat);
this.device.SetRenderTarget(renderTarget);
this.device.Clear(ClearOptions.Target | ClearOptions.DepthBuffer, Color.DeepSkyBlue, 1.0f, 0);
Rectangle screenRectangle = new Rectangle(0, 0, screenWidth, screenHeight);

// Set the effect parameters (the 'simple' technique creates a red lambertian shaded model, like is shown on the image below)
effect.CurrentTechnique = effect.Techniques["Simple"];
effect.Parameters["TextureWidth"].SetValue(screenWidth);
device.DepthStencilState = DepthStencilState.Default;
device.BlendState = BlendState.Opaque;

// Draw the model
mesh.Draw();

// Render our scene
this.device.SetRenderTarget(null);

effect.CurrentTechnique = effect.Techniques["GaussianBlur"];

spriteBatch.Begin(0, BlendState.Opaque, null, null, null, effect);
spriteBatch.Draw((Texture2D)renderTarget, screenRectangle, Color.White);
spriteBatch.End();

The pixelshader:

float Pixels[13] =
{
   -6,
   -5,
   -4,
   -3,
   -2,
   -1,
    0,
    1,
    2,
    3,
    4,
    5,
    6,
};

float BlurWeights[13] =
{
   0.002216,
   0.008764,
   0.026995,
   0.064759,
   0.120985,
   0.176033,
   0.199471,
   0.176033,
   0.120985,
   0.064759,
   0.026995,
   0.008764,
   0.002216,
};


float4 GaussianPixelShader(float2 TextureCoordinate : TEXCOORD0) : COLOR
{
    // Pixel width
    float pixelWidth = 1/TextureWidth;

    float4 color = {0, 0, 0, 1};

    float2 blur;
    blur.y = TextureCoordinate.y;

    for (int i = 0; i < 13; i++) 
    {
        blur.x = TextureCoordinate.x + Pixels[i] * pixelWidth;
        color += tex2D(TextureSampler, blur.xy) * BlurWeights[i];
    }  

    return color;
}

What I have further found out by testing

The code in the GaussianPixelShader does get executed (if I set it to just return a black color it gives an entire solid black screen) but just doesn't seem to work/do the blurring.

Images

This is how currently my model looks (I cant see any blurring but maybe the blurring is just too light): image.

Full Code

Link to the shader code and the link to the xna/c# code.

Answer 1

It looks like TextureWidth is an integer. The line:

    float pixelWidth = 1/TextureWidth;

will be calculated using integer arithmetic, and so long as TextureWidth > 1, the result will be zero. This means the line:

    blur.x = TextureCoordinate.x + Pixels[i] * pixelWidth;

will be equivalent to:

    blur.x = TextureCoordinate.x;

and you will end up with a weighted sum of the same pixel.

You can fix this by making sure that pixelWidth is calculated using floating point arithmetic:

    float pixelWidth = 1.0/(float)TextureWidth;