How to display shape and text on OpenGL screen simultaneously? - c++

Question

The below code works perfectly fine with no fatal error but, when i use arguments "w","h" in "gluortho2d" as gluortho2d(0,w,h,0) in reshape function I get text on screen whereas if I put these arguments "0,0" as gluortho2d(0,0,0,0) I get shape of box.
How can I get both of them(box and text) simultaneously on screen?
#include"glut.h"
void drawBitmapText(char *string, float x, float y, float z);
void reshape(int w, int h);
void display(void);
void drawBitmapText(char *string, float x, float y, float z)
{
char *c;
glRasterPos3f(x, y, z);//define position on the screen where to draw text.
for (c = string; *c != '\0'; c++)
{
glutBitmapCharacter(GLUT_BITMAP_TIMES_ROMAN_24, *c);
}
}
void reshape(int w, int h)
{
glViewport(0, 0, w, h);
glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
glLoadIdentity();//Resets to identity Matrix.
gluOrtho2D(0, w, h, 0);
glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
glLoadIdentity();
}
void display(void)
{
glBegin(GL_POLYGON);//1
glVertex2f(-0.2, 0.6 - 0.3);
glVertex2f(-0.1, 0.6 - 0.3);
glVertex2f(-0.1, 0.5 - 0.3);
glVertex2f(-0.2, 0.5 - 0.3);
glEnd();
glColor3f(0, 1, 0);
drawBitmapText("Usama Ishfaq", 200, 400, 0);//drawBitmapText("Usama Ishfaq", x(how much right), y(how much down), z);
glutSwapBuffers();
}
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
glutInit(&argc, argv);
glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_RGBA | GLUT_DOUBLE);
glutInitWindowSize(500, 500);
glutInitWindowPosition(100, 100);
glutCreateWindow("Usama OGL Window");
glutDisplayFunc(display);
glutReshapeFunc(reshape);
glutMainLoop();
return 0;
}

Answer 1

By not following bad tutorials and placing calls to glViewport and projection matrix setup at the only place valid: The display function. Setting the viewport and projection matrix in the reshape handler is an anti-pattern. Don't do it.
Do this
void display(void)
{
int const w = glutGet(GLUT_WINDOW_WIDTH);
int const h = glutGet(GLUT_WINDOW_HEIGHT);
glViewport(0, 0, w, h);
glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
glLoadIdentity();//Resets to identity Matrix.
gluOrtho2D(-1, 1, -1, 1);
glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
glLoadIdentity();
glBegin(GL_POLYGON);//1
glVertex2f(-0.2, 0.6 - 0.3);
glVertex2f(-0.1, 0.6 - 0.3);
glVertex2f(-0.1, 0.5 - 0.3);
glVertex2f(-0.2, 0.5 - 0.3);
glEnd();
/* viewport doesn't change in this
* application, but it's perfectly
* valid to set a different
* glViewport(...) here */
glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
glLoadIdentity();//Resets to identity Matrix.
gluOrtho2D(0, w, h, 0);
glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
glLoadIdentity();
glColor3f(0, 1, 0);
drawBitmapText("Usama Ishfaq", 200, 400, 0);//drawBitmapText("Usama Ishfaq", x(how much right), y(how much down), z);
glutSwapBuffers();
}
Update (due to request in coments):
Why is it wrong to set the viewport and projection parameters in the reshape handler? Well, you just experienced the reason yourself: They are not "one size fits all" state and throughout rendering slightly more complex frames that go beyond just a mesh drawn, you're going to want to mix and match different viewports and projections throughout rendering. Here's a (incomplete) list of things that require to have different viewports and projections while rendering a single frame:
render-to-texture (FBO) – needs viewport withing the bounds of the texture, and usually also a different projection (important for shadow mapping, dynamic cubemaps and lots of other advanced, multipass rendering techniques)
minimaps / overview frames or similar in the corner (viewport covering just the corner)
text annotation overlays (different projection; usually a plain identity transform so to draw text rectangles directly in NDC space)
"magnifying glass" overlay
Since changing viewport and projection state happens multiple times in only slightly more complex OpenGL drawing, it makes
a) zero sense to set it in the reshape handler: whatever the handler sets will be set only at the beginning of the drawing of the first frame and thereafter the frame drawing code itself would have to reset to what the reshape handler sets. So why even bother doing it in the reshape handler at all?
b) placing viewport and projection setup code in the reshape handler a burden in the long run, because it might cause other parts of the program getting dependent on that. And if that happens, once you realize your mistake and try to move that viewport and projection setup code to where it belongs other parts of the program that relied on it being called from the reshape handler break and you have to fix those, too.
All in all, there are no reasons to place any drawing related calls (and glViewport and projection setup definitely are drawing related) in the reshape handler. Of course "one time" initialization is perfectly fine there, i.e. if you want to adjust the size of FBO render targets to match the window, or if you want to prepare an overlay image that later on gets applied repeatedly.

Answer 2

You can make this much simpler. For what you're doing, there's no need to bother with setting transformations at all.
It looks like, for the box, you're trying to use coordinates in the range [-1.0, 1.0] for both coordinate directions. This corresponds to the OpenGL NDC (Normalized Device Coordinates) coordinate system, which is the coordinate space vertices are in after both the modelview and projection transformations are applied. If you keep these at their default identity matrix, you can specify coordinates directly in NDC space. In other words, to use coordinates in the range [-1.0, 1.0], do... nothing at all, and just keep everything at its default.
The reason the box rendering works for you when you call:
gluOrtho2D(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0);
is that this call will result in an error, as documented on the man page:
GL_INVALID_VALUE is generated if left = right, or bottom = top, or near = far.
and will therefore keep the defaults untouched, which is exactly what you need.
Now, for the text, it looks like you want to specify the position in units of pixels. The problem you're having is that glRasterPos*() runs the specified coordinates through the transformation pipeline, meaning that, with the default identity modelview and projection transformations, it expects the input coordinates to be in the range [-1.0, 1.0] just like the coordinates you pass to glVertex2f().
Fortunately, there's a very easy way to avoid that. There's a very similar glWindowPos*() call, with the only difference that the coordinates passed to it are in window coordinates, which are in units of pixels.
So in summary:
Remove all glMatrixMode() calls.
Remove all glLoadIdentity() calls.
Remove all gluOrtho2D() calls.
In drawBitmapText(), replace the glRasterPos3f() call by:
glWindowPos2f(x, y);
The only thing to watch out for is that the origin of window coordinates is in the bottom left corner. So if your text position is given relative to the top left corner, you'll need something like:
glWindowPos2f(x, windowHeight - y);
To address some misleading information in another answer: It's perfectly fine to call glViewport() in the reshape() function, as long as you use the same viewport for all your rendering. In more complex applications, you will often need different viewports for different parts of the rendering (e.g. when you render to FBOs, or to only part of the window), so you will need to call glViewport() at the proper places during rendering. But for a simple example, where you do all your rendering to the entire window, there's nothing wrong with calling it in reshape().