What causes "The Texture must be a Render Target" in stride3d/stride?

Recreate the texture with TextureFlags.RenderTarget included in the flags argument.

stride3d/stride · error · ArgumentException

The Texture must be a Render Target

Error message

The Texture must be a Render Target

What it means

EnsureRenderTarget is a guard extension that verifies a Texture was created with TextureFlags.RenderTarget. Stride throws ArgumentException when a non-null texture passed in does not have IsRenderTarget set, because operations that treat the texture as a render target (binding it as output) are only valid for render-target textures.

Solutions

Recreate the texture with TextureFlags.RenderTarget included in the flags argument.
If the texture must be both sampled and rendered to, use TextureFlags.RenderTarget | TextureFlags.ShaderResource.
If passing null is legitimate, the call already returns null; only fix non-null non-render-target textures.

Example fix

// before
var tex = Texture.New2D(device, 512, 512, PixelFormat.R8G8B8A8_UNorm, TextureFlags.ShaderResource);
tex.EnsureRenderTarget();
// after
var tex = Texture.New2D(device, 512, 512, PixelFormat.R8G8B8A8_UNorm, TextureFlags.ShaderResource | TextureFlags.RenderTarget);
tex.EnsureRenderTarget();

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

if (texture is { IsRenderTarget: false })
    throw new InvalidOperationException("Texture must be created with TextureFlags.RenderTarget");

Type guard

static bool IsRenderTarget(Texture? t) => t is { IsRenderTarget: true };

Try / catch

try { tex.EnsureRenderTarget(); }
catch (ArgumentException ex)
{
    logger.LogError(ex, "Texture {Name} is not a render target", tex.Name);
    tex = RecreateAsRenderTarget(tex);
}

Prevention

Always pass TextureFlags.RenderTarget when a texture will be bound as an output.
Centralize texture creation in a factory that enforces required flags.
Check IsRenderTarget in debug asserts before render-pass setup.

When it happens

Trigger: Calling texture.EnsureRenderTarget() on a texture created without TextureFlags.RenderTarget (e.g. a plain ShaderResource texture created via Texture.New2D without the flag, or a texture loaded from file).

Common situations: Creating a depth/color buffer for post-processing but forgetting the RenderTarget flag; reusing a texture loaded from disk as a render output; flag changes after upgrading Stride versions.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Must be a positive integer", "Invalid value", "Unsupported": the invalid-argument-value error family, when a library rejects the value you pass — this error's family across 35 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of stride3d/stride@96fad776d2 (2026-09-14). Data as JSON: /api/errors/024f3856a7c2cf88. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at sources/engine/Stride.Graphics/Texture.Extensions.cs:81

        description.Format = Texture.ComputeShaderResourceFormatFromDepthFormat(description.Format); // TODO: review this
        if (description.Format == PixelFormat.None)
            throw new NotSupportedException("This Depth-Stencil format is not supported");

        description.Flags = TextureFlags.ShaderResource;
        return Texture.New(texture.GraphicsDevice, description);
    }

    /// <summary>
    ///   Verifies that a given <see cref="Texture"/> is a Render Target.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="texture"></param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    /// <exception cref="ArgumentException"></exception>
    public static Texture EnsureRenderTarget(this Texture texture)
    {
        if (texture is not null && !texture.IsRenderTarget)
        {
            throw new ArgumentException("The Texture must be a Render Target", nameof(texture));
        }
        return texture;
    }

    /// <summary>
    ///   Creates a <see cref="Texture"/> from image file data.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="graphicsDevice">The graphics device in which to create the Texture.</param>
    /// <param name="data">The image file data.</param>
    /// <returns>The created Texture.</returns>
    public static Texture FromFileData(GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice, byte[] data)
    {
        Texture result;

        var loadAsSRgb = graphicsDevice.ColorSpace == ColorSpace.Linear;

        using (var imageStream = new MemoryStream(data))
        {

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