Proper gluLookAt for gluCylinder - c++

I'm trying to draw a cylinder in a specific direction with gluCylinder. To specify the direction I use gluLookAt, however, as so many before me, I am not sure about the "up" vector and thus can't get the cylinder to point to the correct direction.
I've read from another SO answer that
The intuition behind the "up" vector in gluLookAt is simple: Look at anything. Now tilt your head 90 degrees. Where you are hasn't changed, the direction you're looking at hasn't changed, but the image in your retina clearly has. What's the difference? Where the top of your head is pointing to. That's the up vector.
It is a simple explanation but in the case of my cylinder I feel like the up vector is totally unimportant. Since a cylinder can be rotated around its axis and still look the same, a different up vector wouldn't change anything. So there should be infinitely many valid up vectors for my problem: all orthogonals to the vector from start point to end point.
So this is what I do:
I have the world coordinates of where the start-point and end-point of the cylinder should be, A_world and B_world.
I project them to viewport coordinates A_vp and B_vp with gluProject:
GLdouble A_vp[3], B_vp[3], up[3], model[16], projection[16];
GLint gl_viewport[4];
glGetDoublev(GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX, &model[0]);
glGetDoublev(GL_PROJECTION_MATRIX, &projection[0]);
glGetIntegerv(GL_VIEWPORT, gl_viewport);
gluProject(A_world[0], A_world[1], A_world[2], &model[0], &projection[0], &gl_viewport[0], &A_vp[0], &A_vp[1], &A_vp[2]);
gluProject(B_world[0], B_world[1], B_world[2], &model[0], &projection[0], &gl_viewport[0], &B_vp[0], &B_vp[1], &B_vp[2]);
I call glOrtho to reset the camera to its default position: Negative z into picture, x to the right, y up:
glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
glLoadIdentity();
glOrtho(0, vp_edgelen, vp_edgelen, 0, 25, -25);
glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
glLoadIdentity();
I translate to coordinate A_vp, calculate the up vector as the normal to the vector A_vp — B_vp and specify the view with gluLookAt:
glTranslatef(A_vp[0], gl_viewport[2] - A_vp[1], A_vp[2]);
glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
GLdouble[] up = {A_vp[1] * B_vp[2] - A_vp[2] * B_vp[1],
A_vp[2] * B_vp[0] - A_vp[0] * B_vp[2],
A_vp[0] * B_vp[1] - A_vp[1] * B_vp[0]};
gluLookAt(0, 0, 0,
B_vp[0], gl_viewport[2] - B_vp[1], B_vp[2],
up[0], up[1], up[2]);
I draw the cylinder with gluCylinder:
GLUquadricObj *gluCylObj = gluNewQuadric();
gluQuadricNormals(gluCylObj, GLU_SMOOTH);
gluQuadricOrientation(gluCylObj, GLU_OUTSIDE);
gluCylinder(gluCylObj, 10, 10, 50, 10, 10);
Here is the unexpected result:
Since the cylinder starts at the correct position and since I was able to draw a circle at position B_vp, the only thing that must be wrong is the "up" vector in gluLookAt, right?

gluLookAt() is not necessary to achieve the proper perspective. It is enough to rotate the current z-vector to point to the direction the cylinder should point.

Related

Understanding the window coordinates' interpretation in OpenGL

I was trying to understand OpenGL a bit more deep and I got stuck with below issue.
This segment describes my understanding, and the outputs are as assumed.
glViewport(0, 0 ,800, 480);
glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
glLoadIdentity();
glFrustum(-400.0, 400.0, -240.0, 240.0, 1.0, 100.0);
glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
glLoadIdentity();
glTranslatef(0, 0, -1);
glRotatef(0, 0, 0, 1);
glBegin(GL_QUADS);
glVertex3f(-128, -128, 0.0f);
glVertex3f(128, -128, 0.0f);
glVertex3f(128, 128, 0.0f);
glVertex3f(-128, 128, 0.0f);
glEnd();
The window coordinates (Wx, Wy, Wz) for the above snippet are
(272.00000286102295, 111.99999332427979, 5.9604644775390625e-008)
(527.99999713897705, 111.99999332427979, 5.9604644775390625e-008)
(527.99999713897705, 368.00000667572021, 5.9604644775390625e-008)
(272.00000286102295, 368.00000667572021, 5.9604644775390625e-008)
I did a glReadPixels() and dumped to a bmp file. In the image I get a quad as expected with the (Wx, Wy) mentioned above ( since incase of images, the origin is at the top left, while verifying the bmp image I took care of subtracting the the window height i.e 480). This output was as per my understanding - (Wx, Wy) will be used as a 2D coordinate and Wz will be used for depth purpose.
Now comes the issue. I tried the below code snippet.
glViewport(0, 0 ,800, 480);
glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
glLoadIdentity();
glFrustum(-400.0, 400.0, -240.0, 240.0, 1.0, 100.0);
glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
glLoadIdentity();
glTranslatef(100, 0, -1);
glRotatef(30, 0, 1, 0);
glBegin(GL_QUADS);
glVertex3f(-128, -128, 0.0f);
glVertex3f(128, -128, 0.0f);
glVertex3f(128, 128, 0.0f);
glVertex3f(-128, 128, 0.0f);
glEnd()
The window coordinates for the above snippet are
(400.17224205479812, 242.03174613770986, 1.0261343689191909)
(403.24386530741430, 238.03076912806583, 0.99456100555566640)
(403.24386530741430, 241.96923087193414, 0.99456100555566640)
(400.17224205479812, 237.96825386229017, 1.0261343689191909)
When I dumped output to a bmp file, I expected to have a very small parallelogram(approx like a 4 x 4 square transformed to a parallelogram) based on the above (Wx, Wy). But this was not the case. The image had a different set of coordinates as below
(403, 238)
(499, 113)
(499, 366)
(403, 241)
I have mentioned the coordinates in CW direction as seen on the image.
I got lost here. Can anyone please help in understanding what and why it is happening in the 2nd case??
How come I got a point (499, 113) on the screen when it was no where in the calculated window coordinates?
I used gluProject() to the window coordinates.
Note : I'm using OpenGL 2.0. I'm just trying to understand the concepts here, so please don't suggest to use versions > OpenGL 3.0.
edit
This is an update for the answer posted by derhass
The homogenous coordinates after the projection matrix for the 2nd case is as follows
(-0.027128123630699719, -0.53333336114883423, -66.292930483818054, -63.000000000000000)
(0.52712811245482882, -0.53333336114883423, 64.292930722236633, 65.00000000000000)
(0.52712811245482882, 0.53333336114883423, 64.292930722236633, 65.000000000000000)
(-0.027128123630699719, 0.53333336114883423, -66.292930483818054, 63.000000000000000)
So here for the vertices where z > -1, the vertices will get clipped at the near plane. When this is the case, shouldn't GL use the projected point at z = -1 plane?
The thing you are missing here is clipping.
After this
glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
glLoadIdentity();
glFrustum(-400.0, 400.0, -240.0, 240.0, 1.0, 100.0);
you basically have a camera at origin, looking along the -z direction, and the near plane at z=-1, the far plane at z=-100. Now you draw a 128x128 square rotated at 30 degrees aliong the y (up) axis, and shifted by -1 along z (and 100 along x, but that is not the crucial point here). Since You rotated the square around its center point, the z value for two of the points will be way before the near plane, while the other two should fall into the frustum. (And you can also see that as those two points match your expectations).
Now directly projecting all 4 points to window space is not what GL does. It transforms the points to clip space, intersects the primitives with all 6 sides of the viewing frustum and finally projects the clipped primitives into window space for rasterization.
The projection you did is actually only meaningful for points which lie inside the frustum. Two of your points lie behind the camrea, and projecting points behind the camera will create an mirrored image of these points in front of the camera.

dynamically render a 2d board in 3d view

I am a beginner in openGL. I am currently working on a program which take in inputs the width and the length of a board. Given those inputs i want to dynamically position my camera so that i can have a view on the whole board. Let' s say that my window size is 1024x768.
Are there any mathematical formula to compute the different parameters of the opengl function glookat to make it possible ?
the view i want to have on the board should look like this.
It doesn't matter if a board too big will make things look tiny. What matters the most here is to position the camera in a way that the view on the whole board is made possible
So far i am hopelessly randomly changing the parameters of my glookat function till i ran into something decent for a X size width and and Y size Height.
my gluperpective function :
gluPerspective(70 ,1024 / 768,1,1000)
my glooatfunction for a 40 * 40 board
gluLookAt(20, 20, 60, 20, -4, -20, 0, 1, 0);
how i draw my board (plane):
glClear( GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT );
glMatrixMode( GL_MODELVIEW );
glLoadIdentity();
gluLookAt(20, 20, 60, 20, -4, -20, 0, 1, 0);
glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture_sol);
glBegin(GL_QUADS);
glTexCoord2i(0, 0); glVertex3i(width, 0, height);
glTexCoord2i(10, 0); glVertex3i(0, 0, height)
glTexCoord2i(10, 10); glVertex3i(0, 0, 0);
glTexCoord2i(0, 10); glVertex3i(width, 0, 0);
glEnd();
the output looks as follow :
gluLookAt takes 2 points and a vector; the eye and centre positions and the up vector. There's no issue with the last parameter. The first two are relevant to your question.
I see that your board in the world space is extending on the positive X and Y axes with some arbitrary width and height values. Lets take width = height = 1.0 for instance. So the board spans from (0, 0), (1, 0), (1, 1), (0, 1); the Y value is ignored here since the board lies on the Y = 0 plane and have the same value for all vertices; these are just (X, Z) values.
Now coming to gluLookAt, eye is where the camera is in world space and centre is the point where you want the camera to be looking at (in world space)
Say you want the camera to look at centre of the board I presume, so
eye = (width / 2.0f, 0, height/2.0f);
Now you've to position the camera at its vantage point. Say somewhere above the board but towards the positive Z direction since there's where the user is (assuming your world space is right handed and positive Z direction is towards the viewer), so
centre = (width / 2.0f, 5.0f, 1.0f);
Since the farthest point on Z is 0, I just added one more to be slightly father than that. Y is how much above you want to see the board from, I just chose 5.0 as an example. These are just arbitrary values I can come up with, you'll still have to experiment with these values. But I hope you got the essence of how gluLookAt works.
Though this is written as an XNA tutorial, the basic technique and math behind it should carry over to OpenGL and your project:
Positioning the Camera to View All Scene Objects
Also see
OpenGL FAQ
8.070 How can I automatically calculate a view that displays my entire model? (I know the bounding sphere and up vector.)
Edit in response to the comment question
A bounding sphere is simply a sphere that completely encloses your model. It can be described as:
A bounding sphere, S, of a point set P with n points is described by
a center point, c, and a radius, r.
So,
P = the vertices of your model (the board in this case)
c = origin of your model
r = distance from origin of the vertex, in P, farthest from the origin
So the Bounding Sphere for your board would be composed of the origin location (c) and the distance from one corner to the origin (r) assuming the board is a square and all points are equidistant.
For more complicated models, you may employ pre-created solutions [1] or implement your own calculations [2] [3]

Setting the coordinate system for drawing in OpenGL

I just started reading initial chapters of Blue book and got to understand that the projection matrix can be used to modify the mapping of our desired coordinate system to real screen coordinates. It can be used to reset the coordinate system and change it from -1 to 1 on left, right, top and bottom by the following (as an example)
glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
glLoadIdentity(); //With 1's in the diagonal of the identity matrix, the coordinate system is rest from -1 to 1 (and the drawing should happen then inside those coordinates which be mapped later to the screen)
Another example: (Width: 1024, Height: 768, Aspect Ratio: 1.33) and to change the coordinate system, do:
glOrtho (-100.0 * aspectRatio, 100.0 * aspectRatio, -100.0, 100.0, 100.0, 1000.0);
I expected the coordinate system for OpenGL to change to -133 on left, 133 on right, -100 on bottom and 100 on top. Using these coordinates, I understand that the drawing will be done inside these coordinate and anything outside these coordinates will be clipped.
glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
glLoadIdentity();
glOrtho(-100 * aspectRatio, 100 * aspectRatio, -100, 100, 100, 1000);
glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
glRectf(-50.0, 50.0, 200, 100);
However, the above command doesn't give me any output on the screen. What am I missing here?
I see two problems here:
The rect should not by show at all, since glRectf() draws at depth z=0, but you set up your orthorgraphic projection to cover the z range [100,1000], so the object lies before the near plane and should be clipped away.
You do not specifiy waht MODELVIEW matrix you use. In the comments, you mention that the object does show up, but not in the place where you expect it. This also violates my first point, but could be explained if the ModelView matrix is not identity.
So I suggest to first use a different projection matrix with like glOrtho(..., -1.0f, 1.0f); so that z=0 is actually covered, and second insert a glLoadIdentity() call after the glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW) in the above code.
Another approach would be to keep the glOrtho() as it is and to specify a translation matrix wich moves the rect somewhere between z=100 and z=1000.

Is gluLookAt together with glFrustum distorting the rendering?

I am wondering if gluLookAt together with glFrustum is distorting the rendered picture.
This is how a scene is rendered:
And here's the code that rendered it.
InitCamera is called once and should, as I understand it now, set up a matrix so as if I looked from a position 2 units above and 3 units in front of the origin towards the origin. Also glFrustum is used in order to create a perspective`.
void InitCamera() {
glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
glLoadIdentity();
gluLookAt (
0, 2 , 3,
0, 0 , 0,
0, 1 , - 0
);
glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
glLoadIdentity();
glFrustum (- 1, 1,
- 1, 1,
1,1000.0);
glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
}
Then TheScene is what actually draws the picture:
void TheScene() {
glClear(
GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT |
GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT
);
glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
// Draw red circle around origin and radius 2 units:
glColor3d(1,0,0);
glBegin(GL_LINE_LOOP);
for (double i = 0; i<=2 * M_PI; i+=M_PI / 20.0) {
glVertex3d(std::sin(i) * 2.0, 0, std::cos(i) * 2.0);
}
glEnd();
// draw green sphere at origin:
glColor3d(0,1,0);
glutSolidSphere(0.2,128, 128);
// draw pink sphere a bit away
glPushMatrix();
glColor3d(1,0,1);
glTranslated(8, 3, -10);
glutSolidSphere(0.8, 128, 128);
glPopMatrix();
SwapBuffers(hDC_opengl);
}
The red ball should be drawn in the origin and at the center of the red circle around it. But looking at it just feels wierd, and gives me the imprssion that the green ball is not in the center at all.
Also, the pink ball should, imho, be drawn as a perfect circle, not as an ellipse.
So, am I wrong, and the picture is drawn correctly, or am I setting up something wrong?
Your expectations are simply wrong
The perspective projection of a 3d circle (if the circle is fully visible) is an ellipse, however the projection of the center of the circle is NOT in general the center of the ellipse.
The outline of the perspective projection of a sphere is in general a conic section i.e. can be a circle, an ellipse, a parabola or an hyperbola depending on the position of viewpoint, projection plane and sphere in 3D. The reason is that the outline of the sphere can be imagined as a cone starting from the viewpoint and touching the sphere being intersected with the projection plane.
Of course if you're looking at a circle with a perfectly perpendicular camera the center of the circle will be projected to the center of the circle projection. In the same manner if your camera is pointing exactly to a sphere the sphere outline will be a circle, but those are special cases, not the general case.
These differences between the centers are more evident with strong perspective (wide angle) cameras. With a parallel projection instead this apparent distortion is absent (i.e. the projection of the center of a circle is exactly the center of the projection of the circle).
To see the green sphere in the centre of the screen with a perfect circle around it you need to change the camera location like so:
gluLookAt (
0, 3, 0,
0, 0, 0,
0, 0, 1
);
Not sure what's causing the distortion of the purple sphere though.
The perspective is correct, it just looks distorted because that's how things fell together here.
try this for gluLookAt, and play around a bit more.:
gluLookAt (
0, 2 , 10,
0, 0 , 0,
0, 1 , 0
);
The way I tried it out was with a setup that allows me to adjust the position and view direction with the mouse, so you get real time motion. Your scene looks fine when I move around. If you want I can get you the complete code so you can do that too, but it's a bit more than I want to shove into an answer here.

Rotation of camera used for perspective projection

I've just started playing with OpenGl to render a number of structure each comprising a number of polygon.
Basically I want to perform the equivalent of setting a camera at (0,0,z) in the world (structure) coordinates and rotate it about the x,y and z-axes of the world axes (in that order!) to render a view of each structure (as I understand it it common practice to do use the inverse camera matrix). Thus as I understand it I need to translate (to world origin i.e. (0,0,-z)) * rotateZrotateYrotateX * translate (re-define world origin see below)
So I think I need something like:
//Called when the window is resized
void handleResize(int w, int h) {
glViewport(0, 0, w, h);
glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
glLoadIdentity();
gluPerspective(9.148, (double)w / (double)h, 800.0, 1500.0);
}
float _Zangle = 10.0f;
float _cameraAngle = 90.0f;
//Draws the 3D scene
void drawScene() {
glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT);
glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW); //Switch to the drawing perspective
glLoadIdentity(); //Reset the drawing perspective
glTranslatef(0.0f, 0.0f, -z); //Move forward Z (mm) units
glRotatef(-_Zangle, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f); //Rotate "camera" about the z-axis
glRotatef(-_cameraAngle, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); //Rotate the "camera" by camera_angle about y-axis
glRotatef (90.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f); // rotate "camera" by 90 degrees about x-axis
glTranslatef(-11.0f,189.0f,51.0f); //re-define origin of world coordinates to be (11,-189,-51) - applied to all polygon vertices
glPushMatrix(); //Save the transformations performed thus far
glBegin(GL_POLYGON);
glVertex3f(4.91892,-225.978,-50.0009);
glVertex3f(5.73534,-225.978,-50.0009);
glVertex3f(6.55174,-225.978,-50.0009);
glVertex3f(7.36816,-225.978,-50.0009);
.......// etc
glEnd();
glPopMatrix();
However when I compile and run this the _angle and _cameraAngle seem to be reversed i.e. _angle seems to rotate about y-axis (Vertical) of Viewport and _cameraAngle about z-axis (into plane of Viewport)? What am I doing wrong?
Thanks for taking the time to read this
The short answer is: Use gluLookAt(). This utility function creates the proper viewing matrix.
The longer answer is that each OpenGL transformation call takes the current matrix and multiplies it by a matrix built to accomplish the transformation. By calling a series of OpenGL transformation function you build one transformation matrix that will apply the combination of transformations. Effectively, the matrix will be M = M1 * M2 * M3 . . . Mathematically, the transformations are applied from right to left in the above equation.
Your code doesn't move the camera. It stays at the origin, and looks down the negative z-axis. Your transformations move everything in model space to (11,-189,-51), rotates everything 90 degrees about the x-axis, rotates everything 90 degrees about the y-axis, rotates everything 10 degrees about the z-axis, then translates everything -z along the z-axis.
EDIT: More information
I'm a little confused about what you want to accomplish, but I think you want to have elements at the origin, and have the camera look at those elements. The eye coordinates would be where you want the camera, and the center coordinates would be where you want the objects to be. I'd use a little trigonometry to calculate the position of the camera, and point it at the origin.
In this type of situation I usually keep track of camera position using longitude, latitude, and elevation centered on the origin. Calculating x,y,z for the eye coordinates is simplyx = elv * cos(lat) * sin(lon), y = elv * sin(lat), z = elv * cos(lat) * cos(lat).
My gluLookAt call would be gluLookAt(x, y, z, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0);
You could rotate the up on the camera by changing the last three coordinates for gluLookAt.
The z axis is coming from the center of the monitor into you. So, rotating around the z-axis should make the camera spin in place (like a 2D rotation on just the xy plane). I can't tell, but is that what's happening here?
It's possible that you are encountering Gimbal Lock. Try removing one of the rotations and see if things work the way they should.
While it's true that you can't actually move the camera in OpenGL, you can simulate camera motion by moving everything else. This is why you hear about the inverse camera matrix. Instead of moving the camera by (0, 0, 10), we can move everything in the world by (0, 0, -10). If you expand those out into matrices, you will find that they are inverses of each other.
I also noticed that, given the code presented, you don't need the glPushMatrix()/glPopMatrix() calls. Perhaps there is code that you haven't shown that requires them.
Finally, can you provide an idea of what it is you are trying to render? Debugging rotations can be hard without some context.
Short answer :Good tip
Longer answer: Yes the order of matrix multiplication is clear... that's what I meant by inverse camera matrix to indicate moving all the world coordinates of structures into the camera coordinates (hence the use of "camera" in my comments ;-)) instead of actually translating and rotating camera into the world coordinates.
So if I read between the lines correctly you suggest something like:
void drawScene() {
glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT);
glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW); //Switch to the drawing perspective
glLoadIdentity(); //Reset the drawing perspective
gluLookAt(0.0,0.0,z,11.0,-189.0,-51.0,0.0,1.0,0.0); //eye(0,0,z) look at re-defined world origin(11,-189,-51) and up(0.0,1.0,0.0)
glRotatef(-_Zangle, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f); //Rotate "camera" (actually structures) about the z-axis
glRotatef(-_cameraAngle, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); //Rotate the "camera" (actually structures!) by camera_angle about y-axis
glRotatef (90.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f); // rotate "camera" (actually structures) by 90 degrees about x-axis
glPushMatrix();
Or am I still missing something?
I think you are mixing axes of your world with axes of the camera,
GLRotatef only uses axes of the camera, they are not the same as your the world axes once the camera is rotated.