OpenGL: glReadPixels inaccurate for unprojection - opengl

I have my own unproject function for performing reverse projection of a screen point. The code is as follows (written in OpenTK):
public static Vector3 UnProject(Point screenLocation, float depth)
{
int[] viewport = GetViewport();
Vector4 pos = new Vector4();
// Map x and y from window coordinates, map to range -1 to 1
pos.X = (screenLocation.X - viewport[0]) / (float)viewport[2] * 2.0f - 1.0f;
pos.Y = 1 - (screenLocation.Y - viewport[1]) / (float)viewport[3] * 2.0f;
pos.Z = depth * 2.0f - 1.0f;
pos.W = 1.0f;
Vector4 pos2 = Vector4.Transform(pos, Matrix4.Invert(GetModelViewMatrix() * GetProjectionMatrix()));
Vector3 pos_out = new Vector3(pos2.X, pos2.Y, pos2.Z);
return pos_out / pos2.W;
}
Basically, you'd provide the desired unprojection depth to my function, and it will give you the corresponding world coordinate of the screen point. Assuming that this works correctly (which I am 99% sure think it does), I'm having problems converting screen points to world coordinates. This unprojection works fine for picking: I'd call my unproject function twice (once with depth = 0 and another time with depth = 1) to convert the screen point to ray. I perform ray/triangle intersection to determine which object intersects with the ray and based on that I perform picking (which works very accurately).
For another operation (let's call it operation X), I only need to know the world coordinate of the screen point (assuming that the mouse cursor is over an object on the screen). For that, I am obtaining the depth under the cursor by using the glReadPixel function. The problem is that I feel the Z value obtained by reading the depth buffer is a little bit off. If I calculate the intersection with ray casting, I get accurate results, but that is not viable for operation X as operation X needs to be performed every time MouseMoved is triggered.
To demonstrate the lack of accuracy, here are the two numbers I obtained:
glReadPixel + Unprojection yields (0.886105343709181, 0.12422376198582, 0.998496665566841) as the world coordinate under the cursor.
Ray casting + intersection yields  (0.885407337013061, 0.124174778008613, 1) as the world coordinate under the cursor.
This 0.0015 error in the Z value is too much for operation X (as it is very sensitive to small numbers).
Is there something wrong with glReadPixels that I should know about? Is this happening because glReadPixels is only capable of reading float values?

I don't think that glReadPixels is to blame here. I think that the Z buffer precision is the issue. By default, you typically have a 24 bit fixed-point depth buffer. Maybe it helps if you use a 32 bit floating point depth buffer, but you probably need an FBO for that.

Related

OpenGL Raycasting with any object

I'm just wondering if there was any way which one can perform mouse picking detection onto any object. Whether it would be generated object or imported object.
[Idea] -
The idea I have in mind is that, there would be iterations with every object in the scene. Checking if the mouse ray has intersected with an object. For checking the intersection, it would check the mouse picking ray with the triangles that make up the object.
[Pros] -
I believe the benefit of this approach is that, every object can be detected with mouse picking since they all inherit from the detection method.
[Cons] -
I believe this drawbacks are mainly the speed and the method being very expensive. So would need fine tuning of optimization.
[Situation] -
In the past I have read about mouse picking and I too have implemented some basic form of mouse picking. But all those were crappy work which I am not proud of. So again today, I have re-read some of the stuff from online. Nowadays I see alot of mouse picking using color ids and shaders. I'm not too keen for this method. I'm more into a mathematical side.
So here is my mouse picking ray thingamajig.
maths::Vector3 Camera::Raycast(s32 mouse_x, s32 mouse_y)
{
// Normalized Device Coordinates
maths::Vector2 window_size = Application::GetApplication().GetWindowSize();
float x = (2.0f * mouse_x) / window_size.x - 1.0f;
float y = 1.0f;
float z = 1.0f;
maths::Vector3 normalized_device_coordinates_ray = maths::Vector3(x, y, z);
// Homogeneous Clip Coordinates
maths::Vector4 homogeneous_clip_coordinates_ray = maths::Vector4(normalized_device_coordinates_ray.x, normalized_device_coordinates_ray.y, -1.0f, 1.0f);
// 4D Eye (Camera) Coordinates
maths::Vector4 camera_ray = maths::Matrix4x4::Invert(projection_matrix_) * homogeneous_clip_coordinates_ray;
camera_ray = maths::Vector4(camera_ray.x, camera_ray.y, -1.0f, 0.0f);
// 4D World Coordinates
maths::Vector3 world_coordinates_ray = maths::Matrix4x4::Invert(view_matrix_) * camera_ray;
world_coordinates_ray = world_coordinates_ray.Normalize();
return world_coordinates_ray;
}
I have this ray plane intersection function which calculates if a certain ray as intersected with a certain plane. DUH!
Here is the code for that.
bool Camera::RayPlaneIntersection(const maths::Vector3& ray_origin, const maths::Vector3& ray_direction, const maths::Vector3& plane_origin, const maths::Vector3& plane_normal, float& distance)
{
float denominator = plane_normal.Dot(ray_direction);
if (denominator >= 1e-6) // 1e-6 = 0.000001
{
maths::Vector3 vector_subtraction = plane_origin - ray_origin;
distance = vector_subtraction.Dot(plane_normal);
return (distance >= 0);
}
return false;
}
There are many more out there. E.g. Plane Sphere Intersection, Plane Disk Intersection. These things are like very specific. So it feel that is very hard to do mouse picking intersections on a global scale. I feel this way because, for this very RayPlaneIntersection function. What I expect to do with it is, retrieve the objects in the scene and retrieve all the normals for that object (which is a pain in the ass). So now to re-emphasize my question.
Is there already a method out there which I don't know, that does mouse picking in one way for all objects? Or am I just being stupid and not knowing what to do when I have everything?
Thank you. Thank you.
Yes, it is possible to do mouse-picking with OpenGL: you render all the geometry into a special buffer that stores a unique id of the object instead of its shaded color, then you just look at what value you got at the pixel below the mouse and know the object by its id that is written there. However, although it might be simpler, it is not a particularly efficient solution if your camera or geometry constantly moves.
Instead, doing an analytical ray-object intersection is the way to go. However, you don't need to check the intersection of every triangle of every object against the ray. That would be inefficient indeed. You should cull entire objects by their bounding boxes, or even portions of the whole scene. Game engines have their own spacial index data structure to speed-up ray-object intersections. They need it not only for mouse picking, but also for collision-detection, physics simulations, AI, and what-not.
Also note that the geometry used for the picking might be different from the one used for rendering. One example that comes to mind is that of semi-transparent objects.

Kinect: From Color Space to world coordinates

I am tracking a ball using the rgb data from kinect. After this I look up the corresponding depth data. Both of this is working splendid. Now I want to have the actual x,y,z world coordinates (i.e skeleton Space) instead of the x_screen, y_screen and depth values. Unfortunately the methods given by the kinect sdk (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh973078.aspx) don`t help me. Basically i need a function "NuiImageGetSkeletonCoordinatesFromColorPixel" but i does not exist. All the functions basically go in the opposite direction
I know this can probably be done with openNI but i can not use it for other reasons.
Is there a function that does this for me or do i have to do the conversion myself? If I have to do it myself, how would i do this? I sketched up a little diagram http://i.imgur.com/ROBJW8Q.png - do you think this would work?
Check the CameraIntrinsics.
typedef struct _CameraIntrinsics
{
float FocalLengthX;
float FocalLengthY;
float PrincipalPointX;
float PrincipalPointY;
float RadialDistortionSecondOrder;
float RadialDistortionFourthOrder;
float RadialDistortionSixthOrder;
} CameraIntrinsics;
You can get it from ICoordinateMapper::GetDepthCameraIntrinsics.
Then, for every pixel (u,v,d) in depth space, you can get the coordinate in world space by doing this:
x = (u - principalPointX) / focalLengthX * d;
y = (v - principalPointY) / focalLengthY * d;
z = d;
For color space pixel, you need to first find its associated depth space pixel, which you should use ICoordinateMapper::MapCameraPointTodepthSpace. Since not all color pixel has its associated depth pixel (1920x1080 vs 512x424), you can't have the full-HD color point cloud.

Why do I have to divide by Z?

I needed to implement 'choosing an object' in a 3D environment. So instead of going with robust, accurate approach, such as raycasting, I decided to take the easy way out. First, I transform the objects world position onto screen coordinates:
glm::mat4 modelView, projection, accum;
glGetFloatv(GL_PROJECTION_MATRIX, (GLfloat*)&projection);
glGetFloatv(GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX, (GLfloat*)&modelView);
accum = projection * modelView;
glm::mat4 transformed = accum * glm::vec4(objectLocation, 1);
Followed by some trivial code to transform the opengl coordinate system to normal window coordinates, and do a simple distance from the mouse check. BUT that doesn't quite work. In order to translate from world space to screen space, I need one more calculation added on to the end of the function shown above:
transformed.x /= transformed.z;
transformed.y /= transformed.z;
I don't understand why I have to do this. I was under the impression that, once one multiplied your vertex by the accumulated modelViewProjection matrix, you had your screen coordinates. But I have to divide by Z to get it to work properly. In my openGL 3.3 shaders, I never have to divide by Z. Why is this?
EDIT: The code to transform from from opengl coordinate system to screen coordinates is this:
int screenX = (int)((trans.x + 1.f)*640.f); //640 = 1280/2
int screenY = (int)((-trans.y + 1.f)*360.f); //360 = 720/2
And then I test if the mouse is near that point by doing:
float length = glm::distance(glm::vec2(screenX, screenY), glm::vec2(mouseX, mouseY));
if(length < 50) {//you can guess the rest
EDIT #2
This method is called upon a mouse click event:
glm::mat4 modelView;
glm::mat4 projection;
glm::mat4 accum;
glGetFloatv(GL_PROJECTION_MATRIX, (GLfloat*)&projection);
glGetFloatv(GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX, (GLfloat*)&modelView);
accum = projection * modelView;
float nearestDistance = 1000.f;
gameObject* nearest = NULL;
for(uint i = 0; i < objects.size(); i++) {
gameObject* o = objects[i];
o->selected = false;
glm::vec4 trans = accum * glm::vec4(o->location,1);
trans.x /= trans.z;
trans.y /= trans.z;
int clipX = (int)((trans.x+1.f)*640.f);
int clipY = (int)((-trans.y+1.f)*360.f);
float length = glm::distance(glm::vec2(clipX,clipY), glm::vec2(mouseX, mouseY));
if(length<50) {
nearestDistance = trans.z;
nearest = o;
}
}
if(nearest) {
nearest->selected = true;
}
mouseRightPressed = true;
The code as a whole is incomplete, but the parts relevant to my question works fine. The 'objects' vector contains only one element for my tests, so the loop doesn't get in the way at all.
I've figured it out. As Mr David Lively pointed out,
Typically in this case you'd divide by .w instead of .z to get something useful, though.
My .w values were very close to my .z values, so in my code I change the statement:
transformed.x /= transformed.z;
transformed.y /= transformed.z;
to:
transformed.x /= transformed.w;
transformed.y /= transformed.w;
And it still worked just as before.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/10354368/2159051 explains that division by w will be done later in the pipeline. Obviously, because my code simply multiplies the matrices together, there is no 'later pipeline'. I was just getting lucky in a sense, because my .z value was so close to my .w value, there was the illusion that it was working.
The divide-by-Z step effectively applies the perspective transformation. Without it, you'd have an iso view. Imagine two view-space vertices: A(-1,0,1) and B(-1,0,100).
Without the divide by Z step, the screen coordinates are equal (-1,0).
With the divide-by-Z, they are different: A(-1,0) and B(-0.01,0). So, things farther away from the view-space origin (camera) are smaller in screen space than things that are closer. IE, perspective.
That said: if your projection matrix (and matrix multiplication code) is correct, this should already be happening, as the projection matrix will contain 1/Z scaling components which do this. So, some questions:
Are you really using the output of a projection transform, or just the view transform?
Are you doing this in a pixel/fragment shader? Screen coordinates there are normalized (-1,-1) to (+1,+1), not pixel coordinates, with the origin at the middle of the viewport. Typically in this case you'd divide by .w instead of .z to get something useful, though.
If you're doing this on the CPU, how are you getting this information back to the host?
I guess it is because you are going from 3 dimensions to 2 dimensions, so you are normalizing the 3 dimension world to a 2 dimensional coordinates.
P = (X,Y,Z) in 3D will be q = (x,y) in 2D where x=X/Z and y = Y/Z
So a circle in 3D will not be circle in 2D.
You can check this video out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVJeJMWZcq8
I hope I understand your question correctly.

Ray picking with depth buffer: horribly inaccurate?

I'm trying to implement a ray picking algorithm, for painting and selecting blocks (thus I need a fair amount of accuracy). Initially I went with a ray casting implementation, but I didn't feel it was accurate enough (although the fault may have been with my intersection testing). Regardless, I decided to try picking by using the depth buffer, and transforming the mouse coordinates to world coordinates. Implementation below:
glm::vec3 Renderer::getMouseLocation(glm::vec2 coordinates) {
float depth = deferredFBO->getDepth(coordinates);
// Calculate the width and height of the deferredFBO
float viewPortWidth = deferredArea.z - deferredArea.x;
float viewPortHeight = deferredArea.w - deferredArea.y;
// Calculate homogenous coordinates for mouse x and y
float windowX = (2.0f * coordinates.x) / viewPortWidth - 1.0f;
float windowY = 1.0f - (2.0f * coordinates.y) / viewPortHeight;
// cameraToClip = projection matrix
glm::vec4 cameraCoordinates = glm::inverse(cameraToClipMatrix)
* glm::vec4(windowX, windowY, depth, 1.0f);
// Normalize
cameraCoordinates /= cameraCoordinates.w;
glm::vec4 worldCoordinates = glm::inverse(worldToCameraMatrix)
* cameraCoordinates;
return glm::vec3(worldCoordinates);
}
The problem is that the values are easily ±3 units (blocks are 1 unit wide), only getting accurate enough when very close to the near clipping plane.
Does the inaccuracy stem from using single-precision floats, or maybe some step in my calculations? Would it help if I used double-precision values, and does OpenGL even support that for depth buffers?
And lastly, if this method doesn't work, am I best off using colour IDs to accurately identify which polygon was picked?
Colors are the way to go, the depth buffers accuracy depend on the plane distances, the resolution of the FBO texture, also on the normal or slope of the surface.The same precision problem happens during the standard shadowing.(Using colors is a bit easier because of with the depth intersection test one object have more "color", depth values. It's more accurate if one object has one color.)
Also, maybe its just me, but I like to avoid rather complex matrix calculations if they're not necessary. It's enough for the poor CPU to do the other stuffs.
For double precision values, that could drop performance badly. I've encountered this kind of performance drop, it was about 3x slower for me to use doubles rather than floats:
my post:
GLSL performance - function return value/type and an
article about this:
https://superuser.com/questions/386456/why-does-a-geforce-card-perform-4x-slower-in-double-precision-than-a-tesla-card
so yep, you can, use 64 bit floats (double):
http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs...hader_fp64.txt,
and http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs...trib_64bit.txt,
but you should not.
All in all use colored polys, I like colors khmm...
EDIT: more about double precision depth : http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/showthread.php/173450-Double-Precision, its a pretty good discussion

cylinder impostor in GLSL

I am developing a small tool for 3D visualization of molecules.
For my project i choose to make a thing in the way of what Mr "Brad Larson" did with his Apple software "Molecules". A link where you can find a small presentation of the technique used : Brad Larsson software presentation
For doing my job i must compute sphere impostor and cylinder impostor.
For the moment I have succeed to do the "Sphere Impostor" with the help of another tutorial Lies and Impostors
for summarize the computing of the sphere impostor : first we send a "sphere position" and the "sphere radius" to the "vertex shader" which will create in the camera-space an square which always face the camera, after that we send our square to the fragment shader where we use a simple ray tracing to find which fragment of the square is included in the sphere, and finally we compute the normal and the position of the fragment to compute lighting. (another thing we also write the gl_fragdepth for giving a good depth to our impostor sphere !)
But now i am blocked in the computing of the cylinder impostor, i try to do a parallel between the sphere impostor and the cylinder impostor but i don't find anything, my problem is that for the sphere it was some easy because the sphere is always the same no matter how we see it, we will always see the same thing : "a circle" and another thing is that the sphere was perfectly defined by Math then we can find easily the position and the normal for computing lighting and create our impostor.
For the cylinder it's not the same thing, and i failed to find a hint to modeling a form which can be used as "cylinder impostor", because the cylinder shows many different forms depending on the angle we see it !
so my request is to ask you about a solution or an indication for my problem of "cylinder impostor".
In addition to pygabriels answer I want to share a standalone implementation using the mentioned shader code from Blaine Bell (PyMOL, Schrödinger, Inc.).
The approach, explained by pygabriel, also can be improved. The bounding box can be aligned in such a way, that it always faces to the viewer. Only two faces are visible at most. Hence, only 6 vertices (ie. two faces made up of 4 triangles) are needed.
See picture here, the box (its direction vector) always faces to the viewer:
Image: Aligned bounding box
For source code, download: cylinder impostor source code
The code does not cover round caps and orthographic projections. It uses geometry shader for vertex generation. You can use the shader code under the PyMOL license agreement.
I know this question is more than one-year old, but I'd still like to give my 2 cents.
I was able to produce cylinder impostors with another technique, I took inspiration from pymol's code. Here's the basic strategy:
1) You want to draw a bounding box (a cuboid) for the cylinder. To do that you need 6 faces, that translates in 18 triangles that translates in 36 triangle vertices. Assuming that you don't have access to geometry shaders, you pass to a vertex shader 36 times the starting point of the cylinder, 36 times the direction of the cylinder, and for each of those vertex you pass the corresponding point of the bounding box. For example a vertex associated with point (0, 0, 0) means that it will be transformed in the lower-left-back corner of the bounding box, (1,1,1) means the diagonally opposite point etc..
2) In the vertex shader, you can construct the points of the cylinder, by displacing each vertex (you passed 36 equal vertices) according to the corresponding points you passed in.
At the end of this step you should have a bounding box for the cylinder.
3) Here you have to reconstruct the points on the visible surface of the bounding box. From the point you obtain, you have to perform a ray-cylinder intersection.
4) From the intersection point you can reconstruct the depth and the normal. You also have to discard intersection points that are found outside of the bounding box (this can happen when you view the cylinder along its axis, the intersection point will go infinitely far).
By the way it's a very hard task, if somebody is interested here's the source code:
https://github.com/chemlab/chemlab/blob/master/chemlab/graphics/renderers/shaders/cylinderimp.frag
https://github.com/chemlab/chemlab/blob/master/chemlab/graphics/renderers/shaders/cylinderimp.vert
A cylinder impostor can actually be done just the same way as a sphere, like Nicol Bolas did it in his tutorial. You can make a square facing the camera and colour it that it will look like a cylinder, just the same way as Nicol did it for spheres. And it's not that hard.
The way it is done is ray-tracing of course. Notice that a cylinder facing upwards in camera space is kinda easy to implement. For example intersection with the side can be projected to the xz plain, it's a 2D problem of a line intersecting with a circle. Getting the top and bottom isn't harder either, the z coordinate of the intersection is given, so you actually know the intersection point of the ray and the circle's plain, all you have to do is to check if its inside the circle. And basically, that's it, you get two points, and return the closer one (the normals are pretty trivial too).
And when it comes to an arbitrary axis, it turns out to be almost the same problem. When you solve equations at the fixed axis cylinder, you are solving them for a parameter that describes how long do you have to go from a given point in a given direction to reach the cylinder. From the "definition" of it, you should notice that this parameter doesn't change if you rotate the world. So you can rotate the arbitrary axis to become the y axis, solve the problem in a space where equations are easier, get the parameter for the line equation in that space, but return the result in camera space.
You can download the shaderfiles from here. Just an image of it in action:
The code where the magic happens (It's only long 'cos it's full of comments, but the code itself is max 50 lines):
void CylinderImpostor(out vec3 cameraPos, out vec3 cameraNormal)
{
// First get the camera space direction of the ray.
vec3 cameraPlanePos = vec3(mapping * max(cylRadius, cylHeight), 0.0) + cameraCylCenter;
vec3 cameraRayDirection = normalize(cameraPlanePos);
// Now transform data into Cylinder space wherethe cyl's symetry axis is up.
vec3 cylCenter = cameraToCylinder * cameraCylCenter;
vec3 rayDirection = normalize(cameraToCylinder * cameraPlanePos);
// We will have to return the one from the intersection of the ray and circles,
// and the ray and the side, that is closer to the camera. For that, we need to
// store the results of the computations.
vec3 circlePos, sidePos;
vec3 circleNormal, sideNormal;
bool circleIntersection = false, sideIntersection = false;
// First check if the ray intersects with the top or bottom circle
// Note that if the ray is parallel with the circles then we
// definitely won't get any intersection (but we would divide with 0).
if(rayDirection.y != 0.0){
// What we know here is that the distance of the point's y coord
// and the cylCenter is cylHeight, and the distance from the
// y axis is less than cylRadius. So we have to find a point
// which is on the line, and match these conditions.
// The equation for the y axis distances:
// rayDirection.y * t - cylCenter.y = +- cylHeight
// So t = (+-cylHeight + cylCenter.y) / rayDirection.y
// About selecting the one we need:
// - Both has to be positive, or no intersection is visible.
// - If both are positive, we need the smaller one.
float topT = (+cylHeight + cylCenter.y) / rayDirection.y;
float bottomT = (-cylHeight + cylCenter.y) / rayDirection.y;
if(topT > 0.0 && bottomT > 0.0){
float t = min(topT,bottomT);
// Now check for the x and z axis:
// If the intersection is inside the circle (so the distance on the xz plain of the point,
// and the center of circle is less than the radius), then its a point of the cylinder.
// But we can't yet return because we might get a point from the the cylinder side
// intersection that is closer to the camera.
vec3 intersection = rayDirection * t;
if( length(intersection.xz - cylCenter.xz) <= cylRadius ) {
// The value we will (optianally) return is in camera space.
circlePos = cameraRayDirection * t;
// This one is ugly, but i didn't have better idea.
circleNormal = length(circlePos - cameraCylCenter) <
length((circlePos - cameraCylCenter) + cylAxis) ? cylAxis : -cylAxis;
circleIntersection = true;
}
}
}
// Find the intersection of the ray and the cylinder's side
// The distance of the point and the y axis is sqrt(x^2 + z^2), which has to be equal to cylradius
// (rayDirection.x*t - cylCenter.x)^2 + (rayDirection.z*t - cylCenter.z)^2 = cylRadius^2
// So its a quadratic for t (A*t^2 + B*t + C = 0) where:
// A = rayDirection.x^2 + rayDirection.z^2 - if this is 0, we won't get any intersection
// B = -2*rayDirection.x*cylCenter.x - 2*rayDirection.z*cylCenter.z
// C = cylCenter.x^2 + cylCenter.z^2 - cylRadius^2
// It will give two results, we need the smaller one
float A = rayDirection.x*rayDirection.x + rayDirection.z*rayDirection.z;
if(A != 0.0) {
float B = -2*(rayDirection.x*cylCenter.x + rayDirection.z*cylCenter.z);
float C = cylCenter.x*cylCenter.x + cylCenter.z*cylCenter.z - cylRadius*cylRadius;
float det = (B * B) - (4 * A * C);
if(det >= 0.0){
float sqrtDet = sqrt(det);
float posT = (-B + sqrtDet)/(2*A);
float negT = (-B - sqrtDet)/(2*A);
float IntersectionT = min(posT, negT);
vec3 Intersect = rayDirection * IntersectionT;
if(abs(Intersect.y - cylCenter.y) < cylHeight){
// Again it's in camera space
sidePos = cameraRayDirection * IntersectionT;
sideNormal = normalize(sidePos - cameraCylCenter);
sideIntersection = true;
}
}
}
// Now get the results together:
if(sideIntersection && circleIntersection){
bool circle = length(circlePos) < length(sidePos);
cameraPos = circle ? circlePos : sidePos;
cameraNormal = circle ? circleNormal : sideNormal;
} else if(sideIntersection){
cameraPos = sidePos;
cameraNormal = sideNormal;
} else if(circleIntersection){
cameraPos = circlePos;
cameraNormal = circleNormal;
} else
discard;
}
From what I can understand of the paper, I would interpret it as follows.
An impostor cylinder, viewed from any angle has the following characteristics.
From the top, it is a circle. So considering you'll never need to view a cylinder top down, you don't need to render anything.
From the side, it is a rectangle. The pixel shader only needs to compute illumination as normal.
From any other angle, it is a rectangle (the same one computed in step 2) that curves. Its curvature can be modeled inside the pixel shader as the curvature of the top ellipse. This curvature can be considered as simply an offset of each "column" in texture space, depending on viewing angle. The minor axis of this ellipse can be computed by multiplying the major axis (thickness of the cylinder) with a factor of the current viewing angle (angle / 90), assuming that 0 means you're viewing the cylinder side-on.
Viewing angles. I have only taken the 0-90 case into account in the math below, but the other cases are trivially different.
Given the viewing angle (phi) and the diameter of the cylinder (a) here's how the shader needs to warp the Y-Axis in texture space Y = b' sin(phi). And b' = a * (phi / 90). The cases phi = 0 and phi = 90 should never be rendered.
Of course, I haven't taken the length of this cylinder into account - which would depend on your particular projection and is not an image-space problem.