Tessellation shader drawing issues - glsl

I am currently trying to add tessellation shaders to my program and I feel as though I'm at my wit's end. I have gone through several tutorials and delved into a lot of the questions here as well. Unfortunately I still do not understand what I am doing wrong after all of this. I will take any tips gladly, and do admit I'm a total novice here. My vertex and fragment shaders work, but no matter which tutorial I base my code off of, I can not get anything to display once I add tessellation shaders. I get no errors while loading, linking, or using the shaders/program either.
The four shaders in question:
Vertex:
layout (location = 0) in vec4 vertex;
out gl_PerVertex{
vec4 gl_Position;
};
void main()
{
gl_Position = gl_Vertex;
//note I have to multiply this by the MVP matrix if there is no tessellation
}
Tessellation Control Shader:
layout (vertices = 3) out;
out gl_PerVertex {
vec4 gl_Position;
} gl_out[];
void main()
{
if (gl_InvocationID == 0)
{
gl_TessLevelInner[0] = 3.0;
gl_TessLevelOuter[0] = 2.0;
gl_TessLevelOuter[1] = 2.0;
gl_TessLevelOuter[2] = 2.0;
}
gl_out[gl_InvocationID].gl_Position = gl_in[gl_InvocationID].gl_Position;
}
Tessellation Evaluation Shader:
layout(triangles, equal_spacing, ccw) in;
uniform mat4 ModelViewProjectionMatrix;
out gl_PerVertex{
vec4 gl_Position;
};
void main()
{
vec4 position = gl_TessCoord.x * gl_in[0].gl_Position +
gl_TessCoord.y * gl_in[1].gl_Position +
gl_TessCoord.z * gl_in[2].gl_Position;
gl_Position = ModelViewProjectionMatrix * position;
}
Fragment Shader:
void main()
{
gl_FragColor = vec4(0.1, 0.4, 0.0, 1.0);
}
I'm sure I'm overlooking some really simple stuff here, but I'm at an absolute loss here. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

When you draw using a Tessellation Control Shader (this is an optional stage), you must use GL_PATCHES as the primitive type.
Additionally, GL_PATCHES has no default number of vertices, you must set that:
glPatchParameteri (GL_PATCH_VERTICES​, 3);
glDrawElements (GL_PATCHES, 3, ..., ...);
The code listed above will draw a single triangle patch. Now, since geometry shaders and tessellation evaluation shaders do not understand GL_PATCHES, if you remove the tessellation control shader, the draw code will do nothing. Only the tessellation control shader can make sense out of GL_PATCHES primitive, and conversely it cannot make sense of any other kind of primitive.

Related

OpenGL - uniform presence causing shader to be bypassed

UPDATE: So it turns out this was due to a bug in the C side of things, causing some of the matrix to become malformed. The shaders are all fine. So if adding uniforms causes weird things to happen, my advice would be to use a debugger to check the value of ALL uniforms and make sure that they are all being set correctly.
So I am trying to render depth to a cube map to use as a shadow map, but when I add and use a uniform in the fragment shader everything becomes white as if the shader isn't being used. No warnings or errors are generated when compiling/linking the shader.
The shader program I am using to render the depth map (setting the depth simply to the fragment z position as a test) is as follows:
//vertex shader
#version 430
in layout(location=0) vec4 vertexPositionModel;
uniform mat4 modelToWorldMatrix;
void main() {
gl_Position = modelToWorldMatrix * vertexPositionModel;
}
//geometry shader
#version 430
layout (triangles) in;
layout (triangle_strip, max_vertices=18) out;
out vec4 fragPositionWorld;
uniform mat4 projectionMatrices[6];
void main() {
for (int face = 0; face < 6; face++) {
gl_Layer = face;
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
fragPositionWorld = gl_in[i].gl_Position;
gl_Position = projectionMatrices[face] * fragPositionWorld;
EmitVertex();
}
EndPrimitive();
}
}
//Fragment shader
#version 430
in vec4 fragPositionWorld;
void main() {
gl_FragDepth = abs(fragPositionWorld.z);
}
The main shader samples from the cubemap and simply renders the depth as greyscale colour:
vec3 lightDirection = fragPositionWorld - pointLight.position;
float closestDepth = texture(shadowMap, lightDirection).r;
finalColour = vec4(vec3(closestDepth), 1.0);
The scene is a small cube in a larger cubic room, and renders as expected, dark near z = 0 and the cube projected back onto the wall (The depth map is being rendered from the centre of the room):
Good:
[2
I can move the small cube around and the projection projects correctly onto all the sides of the cubemap. All good so far.
The problem is when I add a uniform to the fragment shader, i.e:
#version 430
in vec4 fragPositionWorld;
uniform vec3 lightPos;
void main() {
gl_FragDepth = min(lightPos.y, 0.5);
}
Everything renders as white, same as if the render failed to compile:
Bad:
gDEBugger reports that the uniform is set correctly (0,4,0) but regardless of what that lightPos is, gl_FragDepth should be set to a value less than 0.5 and appear a shade of grey (which is what happens if I set gl_FragDepth = 0.5 directly), so I can only conclude that the fragment shader is not being used for some reason and the default one is being use instead. Unfortunately I have no idea why.

Vertex Shader for a Particle System

I'm working on a simple particle system in OpenGL; so far I've written two fragment shaders to update velocities and positions in response to my mouse, and they seem to work! I've looked at those two textures and they both seem to respond properly (going from random noise to an orderly structure in response to my mouse).
However, I'm having issues with how to draw the particles. I'm rather new to vertex shaders (having previously only used fragment shaders); it's my understanding that the usual way is a vertex shader like this:
uniform sampler2DRect tex;
varying vec4 cur;
void main() {
gl_FrontColor = gl_Color;
cur = texture2DRect(tex, gl_Vertex.xy);
vec2 pos = cur.xy;
gl_Position = gl_ModelViewProjectionMatrix * vec4(pos, 0., 1.);
}
Would transform the coordinates to the proper place according to the values in the position buffer. However, I'm getting gl errors when I run this that it can't be compiled -- after some research, it seems that gl_ModelViewProjectionMatrix is deprecated.
What would be the proper way to do this now that the model view matrix is deprecated? I'm not trying to do anything fancy with perspective, I just need a plain orthogonal view of the texture.
thanks!
What version of GLSL are you using (don't see any #version directive)? Yes, i think gl_ModelViewProjectionMatrix is really deprecated. However if you want to use it maybe this could help. By the way varying qualifier is quite old too. I would rather use in and out qualifiers it makes your shader code more 'readable'.
'Proper' way of doing that is that you create your own matrices - model and view (use glm library for example) and multiply them and then pass them as uniform to your shader. Tutorial with an example can be found here.
Here is my vs shader i used for displaying texture (fullscreen quad):
#version 430
layout(location = 0) in vec2 vPosition;
layout(location = 1) in vec2 vUV;
out vec2 uv;
void main()
{
gl_Position = vec4(vPosition,1.0,1.0);
uv = vUV;
}
fragment shader:
#version 430
in vec2 uv;
out vec4 final_color;
uniform sampler2D tex;
void main()
{
final_color = texture(tex, uv).rgba;
}
and here are my coordinates (mine are static, but you can change it and update buffer - shader can be the same):
//Quad verticles - omitted z coord, because it will always be 1
float pos[] = {
-1.0, 1.0,
1.0, 1.0,
-1.0, -1.0,
1.0, -1.0
};
float uv[] = {
0.0, 1.0,
1.0, 1.0,
0.0, 0.0,
1.0, 0.0
};
Maybe you could try to turn off depth comparison before executing this shader glDisable(GL_DEPTH_TEST);

OpenGL - Adding Tessellation Control Shader yields black screen

When I add my tesselation control shader to my rendering program, the viewport gets black. Without the TSC the vertex and fragment shader work fine. I also checked for compile errors but no occurs.
Vertex shader:
#version 410 core
layout (location = 0) in vec4 offset;
layout (location = 1) in vec4 color;
out VS_OUT {
vec4 color;
} vs_out;
void main(void) {
const vec4 vertices[3] = vec4[3]
(
vec4( 0.25, -0.25, 0.5, 1.0),
vec4(-0.25, -0.25, 0.5, 1.0),
vec4( 0.25, 0.25, 0.5, 1.0)
);
// Add "offset" to our hard-coded vertex position
gl_Position = vertices[gl_VertexID] + offset;
// Output the color from input attrib
vs_out.color = color;
}
Tessellation control shader:
#version 410 core
layout (vertices = 3) out;
void main(void) {
if (gl_InvocationID == 0) {
gl_TessLevelInner[0] = 5.0;
gl_TessLevelOuter[0] = 5.0;
gl_TessLevelOuter[1] = 5.0;
gl_TessLevelOuter[2] = 5.0;
}
gl_out[gl_InvocationID].gl_Position = gl_in[gl_InvocationID].gl_Position;
}
Tessellation evaluation shader:
#version 410 core
layout (triangles, equal_spacing, cw) in;
void main(void) {
gl_Position = (gl_TessCoord.x * gl_in[0].gl_Position +
gl_TessCoord.y * gl_in[1].gl_Position +
gl_TessCoord.z * gl_in[2].gl_Position);
}
Fragment shader:
#version 410 core
in VS_OUT {
vec4 color;
} fs_in;
out vec4 color;
void main(void) {
color = fs_in.color;
}
I forgot to check for shader linking errors. And this is what I get:
WARNING: Output of vertex shader '<out VS_OUT.color>' not read by tessellation control shader
ERROR: Input of fragment shader '<in VS_OUT.color>' not written by tessellation evaluation shader
How can I fix this?
Without the code of the other shaders it's hard to help you.
Make sure your tessellation evaluation shader is correct too. A default one should look like this :
#version 410 core
layout(triangles, equal_spacing, ccw) in;
layout(packed) uniform MatrixBlock
{
mat4 projmat;
mat4 viewmat;
} matTransform;
void main ()
{
vec4 pos = gl_TessCoord.x * gl_in[0].gl_Position
+ gl_TessCoord.y * gl_in[1].gl_Position
+ gl_TessCoord.z * gl_in[2].gl_Position;
gl_Position = matTransform.projmat * matTransform.viewmat * pos;
}
The important part is the interpolation using the barycentric coordinates on the patch triangle. Also if the transformations are done in your vertex shader instead of the tess eval shader you may have strange results too.
Edit :
Now that you added tessellation stages you can't pass varying data from the vertex shader to the fragment shader. Indeed their are new triangles in the original patch triangle so you have to set the color for all these new triangles too. Actually when you use tessellation stages, the vertex shader and the tess control usually forward the vertices input to the tess eval shader.
So your tess control shader should be like :
#version 410 core
layout (vertices = 3) out;
in VS_OUT { vec4 color; } tcs_in[]; /* new */
out TCS_OUT { vec4 color; } tcs_out[]; /* new */
void main(void) {
if (gl_InvocationID == 0) {
gl_TessLevelInner[0] = 5.0;
gl_TessLevelOuter[0] = 5.0;
gl_TessLevelOuter[1] = 5.0;
gl_TessLevelOuter[2] = 5.0;
}
gl_out[gl_InvocationID].gl_Position = gl_in[gl_InvocationID].gl_Position;
tcs_out[gl_InvocationID].color = tcs_in[gl_InvocationID].color; /* forward the data */
}
And you tess eval shader must also interpolate the color :
#version 410 core
layout (triangles, equal_spacing, cw) in;
in TCS_OUT { vec4 color; } tes_in[]; /* new */
out TES_OUT { vec4 color; } tes_out; /* new */
void main(void) {
tes_out.color = (gl_TessCoord.x * tes_in[0].color + /* Interpolation */
gl_TessCoord.y * tes_in[1].color +
gl_TessCoord.z * tes_in[2].color );
gl_Position = (gl_TessCoord.x * gl_in[0].gl_Position +
gl_TessCoord.y * gl_in[1].gl_Position +
gl_TessCoord.z * gl_in[2].gl_Position);
}
And of course in your fragment shader you now have a TES_OUT instead of VS_OUT.
I know this question is two years old now, but I this might help people in the future who experience the same issue and find this question.
After many hours of trying I figured out the problem. It seems as though the gl_in[].gl_Position inputs of the Tessellation Control Shader are not written to by the vertex shader. I suspect this must be a driver bug (maybe in the NVidia drivers?) because I cannot think of any reason this shouldn't work.
Solution:
Instead of relying on the gl_in[].gl_Position inputs of the Tessellation Control Shader just pass them yourself in a custom output/input.
This can be done by (roughly )adding the following lines to the respective shader:
// vertex shader
// ...
out vec4 vVertexOut;
void main() {
// ...
vVertexOut = uMVPMatrix * inVertex; // output your transformed vertex
}
// tesselation control shader
// ...
in vec4 vVertexOut[];
out vec4 tVertexOut[];
void main() {
// ...
tVertexOut[gl_InvocationID] = vVertexOut[gl_InvocationID];
}
// tesselation evaluation shader
// ...
in vec4 tVertexOut[];
void main() {
// ...
gl_Position = (tVertexOut[0] * gl_TessCoord[0]) + (tVertexOut[1] * gl_TessCoord[1]) + (tVertexOut[2] * gl_TessCoord[2]);
}

Is it faster to use texelFetch when rendering fonts?

I am writing some font drawing shaders in OpenGL 3.3. I will render my font into a texture atlas and then generate some display lists for some text I want to draw. I would like the rendering of text to consume the least amount of resources (CPU, GPU memory, GPU time). How can I accomplish this?
Looking at Freetype-gl, I noticed that the author generates 6 indices and 4 vertices per character.
Since I am using OpenGL 3.3, I have some additional freedom. My plan was to generate 1 vertex per character plus one integer "code" per character. The character code can be used in texelFetch operations to retrieve texture coördinates and character size information. A geometry shader turns the size information and vertex into a triangle strip.
Is texelFetch going to be slower than sending more vertices/texture coördinates? Is this worth doing?, or is there are reason why it's not done in the font libraries I looked at?
Final code:
Vertex shader:
#version 330
uniform sampler2D font_atlas;
uniform sampler1D code_to_texture;
uniform mat4 projection;
uniform vec2 vertex_offset; // in view space.
uniform vec4 color;
uniform float gamma;
in vec2 vertex; // vertex in view space of each character adjusted for kerning, etc.
in int code;
out vec4 v_uv;
void main()
{
v_uv = texelFetch(
code_to_texture,
code,
0);
gl_Position = projection * vec4(vertex_offset + vertex, 0.0, 1.0);
}
Geometry shader:
#version 330
layout (points) in;
layout (triangle_strip, max_vertices = 4) out;
uniform sampler2D font_atlas;
uniform mat4 projection;
in vec4 v_uv[];
out vec2 g_uv;
void main()
{
vec4 pos = gl_in[0].gl_Position;
vec4 uv = v_uv[0];
vec2 size = vec2(textureSize(font_atlas, 0)) * (uv.zw - uv.xy);
vec2 pos_opposite = pos.xy + (mat2(projection) * size);
gl_Position = vec4(pos.xy, 0, 1);
g_uv = uv.xy;
EmitVertex();
gl_Position = vec4(pos.x, pos_opposite.y, 0, 1);
g_uv = uv.xw;
EmitVertex();
gl_Position = vec4(pos_opposite.x, pos.y, 0, 1);
g_uv = uv.zy;
EmitVertex();
gl_Position = vec4(pos_opposite.xy, 0, 1);
g_uv = uv.zw;
EmitVertex();
EndPrimitive();
}
Fragment shader:
#version 330
uniform sampler2D font_atlas;
uniform vec4 color;
uniform float gamma;
in vec2 g_uv;
layout (location = 0) out vec4 fragment_color;
void main()
{
float a = texture(font_atlas, g_uv).r;
fragment_color.rgb = color.rgb;
fragment_color.a = color.a * pow(a, 1.0 / gamma);
}
I wouldn't expect there to be a significant performance difference between your proposed method vs storing the quad vertex positions and texture coordinates in a vertex buffer. On the one hand your method requires a smaller vertex buffer and less work for the CPU. On the other hand the texelFetch calls will be more-or-less at random locations, and not make the best use of the cache. This last point may not be very significant as I guess that texture wont be very large. Also, the execution model of geometry shaders mean they can quickly become the bottleneck of the pipeline.
To answer "is this worth doing?" - I suspect not for performance reasons. Unfortunately you can't tell until you implement it and measure the performance. I think it's quite a cool idea though, so I don't think you'd be wasting your time trying it out.
Maybe you can use Atomic Counter to handle current position in text.
Here is an interresting paper on memory bandwidth
GPU perf...
You can cache the result in a fbo.
For realy fast rendering as you said, you may build a geom shader taking points as input and outputing quads and sample a texture to get additional on glyph info.
This appear effectively the best solution...

GLSL/OpenGL shader tessellation flickering and failure

I just started with OpenGL tessellation and have run into a bit a trouble. I am tessellating series of patches formed by one vertex each. These vertices/patches are structured in a gridlike fashion to later form a terrain generated by Perlin Noise.
The problem I have run into is that starting from the second patch, and every 5th patch after that, sometimes have a lot of tessellation (not the way i configured) but most of the time it doesn't get tessellated at all.
Like so:
The two white circles mark the highly/over tessellated patches. Also note the pattern of untessellated patches.
The strange thing is that it works on my Surface Pro 2 (Intel HD4400 graphics) but bugs on my main desktop computer (AMD HD6950 graphics). Is it possible the hardware is bad?
The patches are generated with the code:
vec4* patches = new vec4[m_patchesWidth * m_patchesDepth];
int c = 0;
for (unsigned int z = 0; z < m_patchesDepth; ++z) {
for (unsigned int x = 0; x < m_patchesWidth; ++x) {
patches[c] = vec4(x * 1.5f, 0, z * 1.5f, 1.0f);
c++;
}
}
m_fxTerrain->Apply();
glGenBuffers(1, &m_planePatches);
glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, m_planePatches);
glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, m_patchesWidth * m_patchesDepth * sizeof(vec4), patches, GL_STATIC_DRAW);
GLuint loc = m_fxTerrain->GetAttrib("posIn");
glEnableVertexAttribArray(loc);
glVertexAttribPointer(0, 4, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, sizeof(vec4), nullptr);
delete(patches);
And drawn with:
glPatchParameteri(GL_PATCH_VERTICES, 1);
glBindVertexArray(patches);
glPolygonMode(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_LINE);
glDrawArrays(GL_PATCHES, 0, nrOfPatches);
Vertex Shader:
#version 430 core
in vec4 posIn;
out gl_PerVertex {
vec4 gl_Position;
};
void main() {
gl_Position = posIn;
}
Control shader:
#version 430
#extension GL_ARB_tessellation_shader : enable
layout (vertices = 1) out;
uniform float OuterTessFactor;
uniform float InnerTessFactor;
out gl_PerVertex {
vec4 gl_Position;
} gl_out[];
void main() {
if (gl_InvocationID == 0) {
gl_TessLevelOuter[0] = OuterTessFactor;
gl_TessLevelOuter[1] = OuterTessFactor;
gl_TessLevelOuter[2] = OuterTessFactor;
gl_TessLevelOuter[3] = OuterTessFactor;
gl_TessLevelInner[0] = InnerTessFactor;
gl_TessLevelInner[1] = InnerTessFactor;
}
gl_out[gl_InvocationID].gl_Position = gl_in[gl_InvocationID].gl_Position;
}
Evaluation shader:
#version 430
#extension GL_ARB_tessellation_shader : enable
layout (quads, equal_spacing, ccw) in;
uniform mat4 ProjView;
uniform sampler2D PerlinNoise;
out vec3 PosW;
out vec3 Normal;
out vec4 ColorFrag;
out gl_PerVertex {
vec4 gl_Position;
};
void main() {
vec4 pos = gl_in[0].gl_Position;
pos.xz += gl_TessCoord.xy;
pos.y = texture2D(PerlinNoise, pos.xz / vec2(8, 8)).x * 10.0f - 10.0f;
Normal = vec3(0, 1, 0);
gl_Position = ProjView * pos;
PosW = pos.xyz;
ColorFrag = vec4(pos.x / 64.0f, 0.0f, pos.z / 64.0f, 1.0f);
}
Fragment shader:
#version 430 core
in vec3 PosW;
in vec3 Normal;
in vec4 ColorFrag;
in vec4 PosH;
out vec3 FragColor;
out vec3 FragNormal;
void main() {
FragNormal = Normal;
FragColor = ColorFrag.xyz;
}
I have tried to hardcode the different tessellation levels but that did not help. I recently started out with OpenGL so please let me know if i am doing something stupid.
So does anyone have any idea what could be causing this "flickering" of certain patches?
Update: I had a friend run the project and he got the same pattern of flickering tessellation but the failing patches were not drawn at all except when being overly tessellated. He has the same graphics card as I do (AMD HD6950).
You should use triangle/quad tessellation, in which each patch has 3 or 4 vertices. As I can see, you use quads (I use them too). In that case, you can set it like this:
glPatchParameteri(GL_PATCH_VERTICES,4);
glBindVertexArray(VertexArray);
(TIP: use drawelements for your terrain, much better performance for 2D-displacement based mesh.)
In the control shader, use
layout (vertices = 4) out;
since your patch has 4 control points. The ordering is still important (CCW/CW).
Personally I don't like to use built-in variables, so for the vertex shader you can send your vertex data to the tesscontrol like this:
layout (location = 0) out vec3 outPos;
....
outPos.xz = grid.xy;
outPos.y = noise(outPos.xz);
Tess control:
layout (location = 0) in vec3 inPos[]; //outPos (location = 0) from vertex shader
//'collects' the 4 control points to an array in the order they're sended
layout (location = 0) out vec3 outPos[]; //send the c.points to the ev. shader
...
gl_TessLevelOuter[0] = outt[0];
gl_TessLevelOuter[1] = outt[1];
gl_TessLevelOuter[2] = outt[2];
gl_TessLevelOuter[3] = outt[3];
gl_TessLevelInner[0] = inn[0];
gl_TessLevelInner[1] = inn[1];
outPos[ID] = inPos[ID];//gl_invocationID = ID
Note that both in and out vertex data is an array.
The tessev is simple:
layout (location = 0) in vec3 inPos[]; //the 4 control points
layout (location = 0) out vec3 outPos; //this is no longer array, next is the fragment shader
...
//edit: do not forgot to add the next line
layout (quads) in;
vec3 interpolate3D(vec3 v0, vec3 v1, vec3 v2, vec3 v3) //linear interpolation for x,y,z coords on the quad
{
return mix(mix(v0,v1,gl_TessCoord.x),mix(v3,v2,gl_TessCoord.x),gl_TessCoord.y);
};
...main{...
outPos = interpolate3D(inPos[0],inPos[1],inPos[2],inPos[3]); //the four control points of the quad. Every other point is linearly interpolated between them according to the TessCoord.
gl_Position = mvp * vec4(outPos,1.0f);
A good representation of the quad domain: http://ogldev.atspace.co.uk/www/tutorial30/tutorial30.html.
I think the problem is with your one-vertex patch. I cannot imagine how a one vertex path can be divided into triangles, I don't know how it works on another hardware. The tessellation is for divide primitives into other simple primitives, to triangles in case of OGL, since it can be handled by a GPU easily (3 points always lie in a plane). So, the minimum number of patch vertices should be 3, for a triangle. I like quads, because it simplier to index, and the memory cost is less. It will be divided into triangles too during tessellation. http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2120983
Also, there is another type, the isoline tessellation. (check out the links, the second is pretty good.)
All in all, try it with quads or triangles, and set the control vertices to 4 (or 3). My (pretty complex) terrain shader is here with frustum culling, tessellation shader culling for a geoclipmap based terrain. Also, without tessellation it works with vertex morph in vertex shader. Maybe some part of this code will be useful. http://speedy.sh/TAvPR/gshader.txt
A scene with tessellation at about 4 pixels/triangle runs at 75 FPS (with fraps) with runtime normal calculation and bicubic smoothing and other things. I'm using AMD HD 5750. It still could be much faster with better code and pre-baked normals:D. (runs at max 120 w/o normal calc.)
Oh, and you can only send the x and z coords if you displace the vertex in the shader. It will be faster too.
Lots of vertices.