3d picking from arbitrary viewpoint - opengl

I created a 3d scene of many pipes (valves,manhole) of different colors and materials . Now I want to use the mouse to pick them and get their attributes(color,material). I've tried to use glupushmatrix, the method provided by OpenGL API ,it worked when the viewpoint is almost right in front of the pipe.But when looking from different viewpoints ,such as from (0,1,1) to (0,0,0),it can't do it. What's more , I didn't find any projection settings for functions glulookat before glupushmatrix . I also tried to use ray tracing based picking using math , but I found it is difficult to do intersection testing for each pipe using brute force .

OpenGL provide a special render mode (GL_SELECT) to help achieving picking.
To implement it you have to:
Name your selectable primitives
Add a rendering pass with GL_SELECT mode.
edited the link:
Follow this tutorial...

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way to have 3d animated/rigged character in Opengl

If I want a 3D animated/rigged character in OpenGL game how i would have it in OpenGL?If i make a animated/rigged character in 3Ds max is it possible to have that character in OpenGl?would be helpful if someone gives a proper way or a tutorial link to export animated model from 3d software to open GL
OpenGL is a very simple 3D framework which only offers the bare bones. OpenGL can display triangles and fill them with color and that's about it. It comes with some helper functions to manipulate point clouds but it's really very basic.
Animation and rigging are way beyond what it can do. What you need is a framework which supports animation and rigging which then uses OpenGL to display the result.
Since you don't specify any requirements, it's hard to say which one would be good for you. Blender is probably a good place to start. It's game engine runs on many platforms, supports OpenGL, animation and rigging.

OpenGL : GL_QUADS hides part of glutBitmapCharacter

I am trying to visualize a CAD geometry where GL_QUADS is used for the geometry and glutBitmapCharacter to annotate with a text.
The GL_QUADS hides the text partially (e.g 33,32,... here) for some view orientations (picture 1).
If I use glDisable(GL_DEPTH_TEST) to get the text displayed properly, I get the text that is supposed to annotate the back surface is also displayed (picture 2).
My objective is to annotate the visible front surfaces without being obscured but having the annotation on the back surfaces not shown.
(I am able to solve this by slightly offsetting the annotation normal to the quad, but this will cause me some other issues in my program, so I don't prefer this solution)
Could somebody please suggest me a solution ?
Well, as I expect you already know, it looks like the text is getting cut off because of the way it's positioned/oriented - it is drawing from a point and from right-to-left on the screen.
If you don't want to offset it (as you already mentioned, but I still suggest as it's the simple solution) then one way might be to rotate the text the same way the object's being rotated. This would (I'd expect) simply be a matter of changing where you draw the text to the same place you draw each quad (thus using the same Matrix). Of course then the text won't be as legible. This solution also requires the use of a different Object for rendering the text, such as FreeType Fonts.
EDIT 2: another solution would be texture-mapped text
Could somebody please suggest me a solution ?
You need to implement collision detection engine.
If point in 3d space at which label must be displayed is not obscured, render text with depth test disabled. This will fix your problem completely.
As far as I can tell, there's no other way to solve the problem if you want to keep letters oriented towards viewer - no matter what you do, there will always be a a good chance of them being partially obscured by something else.
Since you need a very specific kind of collision detection (detect visibility of a point), you could try to solve this problem using select buffer. On other hand, detecting ray/triangle (see gluUnProject/gluProject) collision isn't too hard to implement, although on complex scenes things will quickly get more complicated and you'll need to implement scene graph and use algorithms similar to octrees.

Enable antialiasing using Xlib

I'm trying to develop a custom set of libraries for creating GUIs in Linux, with, you know, widgets, buttons, etc. So I'm now learning to creating user interfaces using X11 and its Xlib. I get to the point of having a nice window of a size specified, at a position specified, of a specified background color, and the possibility of drawing points, rectangles, arcs. However as I drew my first circle I got really disappointed by the fact that the circle is not antialiased. I can see every single pixel as a square.
Now the question is easy. Is there any way to tell X: please antialias anything before drawing? Or do I have to avoid using XDrawArc and use a custom function which calls XDrawPoint for each point of the circle? Or there is a third solution?
Thanks in advance.
The short answer is "no". Xlib doesn't do anti-aliasing.
The longer answer is "you can use a higher level API such as Cairo Graphics". It's not necessary to roll your own.
What you encountered are the limitations of the X11 core protocol; technically it would be perfectly possible to add antialiasing to it, but that didn't happen.
Instead there's the XRender extension, that provides nice antialiased primitives. You'll also want to look into Xft to render antialiased text using vector fonts.
You can roll your own antialiasing algorithm. You have the only 2 primitives you need: 1) a function to draw TrueColor points (namely, xcb_poly_point(), if you're using XCB), and 2) for loops.

Idea about how to model a building using OpenGL/GLUT?

I'm new to graphics, and I have to make a model of a building for an assignment using only GLUT or OpenGL.
Basically the school building's model( only the exterior portion) is to be made, and I have no clue where to start. Upto now I have drawn polygons, other shapes using GLUT, nothing in which there are multiple shapes. All the drawing upto now is using lines, or points, or polygons and mathematics.
Could you please give me an idea of how to go about it?
Update: I just want to know what steps I can follow to get it done. Some reference links would be awesome!
You could use modeling programs to create your model, and then use tools such as COLLADA to get your model into OpenGL.
The problem with hand-coding a complex object like that is that it takes a great number of lines of code just to define the vertices of the object.
People usually use 3D modeler software to build complex 3D objects, like Maya, 3DSMax or Blender and then export them in a format to be read into your OpenGL application.
Think about what you want your building to look like, and think about what kind of triangles you need to render in order to make that. You can either draw the entire thing in some sort of modelling software, and then import it into OpenGL, or you can come up with the triangles/textures yourself and do it by hand in OpenGL.
The exterior of the building will probably have a similar texture on the whole thing (brick, etc), and then there will be windows, doors, and a roof. Maybe some sort of sign that says "School Building". Take this all into account, what exactly you want your building to look like, and then think about what textures you will need to draw these things.
For example, say you're doing a brick building that is in the shape of a box, with a door and a few windows. I'd use one texture for the brick, and first draw an entire wall of brick. Then, I'd use a grey/blue looking texture for the window, and draw it over the brick wall. Then I'd do the same (different texture) for the door.
Just think about the design, and then just try things out - experiment. Good luck!
I once had a simillar homework. I did it by creating the models with Google SketchUp, then export the models to .3ds file and use my program to render it.
I choose Google SketchUp because it's the easiest to use among those tool I tried. Plus, they had a discount for students. You could also use Blender, which is free but take too much time to learn IMHO. 3dsMax is too expensive to pay for a homework.
To load the model into my program, I used Assimp library.

How to use opengl to create cylinder effect

I would like to know how to create 'cylinder effect', like the top site feature in safari 4, here is a picture
http://www.macworld.com/article/139022/2009/02/safari4firstlook.html
Can you tell me what should i learn , how to get started?
I would start by working through the OpenGL tutorials on NeHe's website. You might also want to invest in the Red Book. Topics you'll be interested in: Geometry and texture mapping. I think NeHe even has an example of texture mapping on a cylinder.
Depending on what you hope to accomplish, you might be able to use the Visualization Toolkit to draw a texture on a cylinder in 100 lines of code or less. There's a bit of a learning curve to VTK (and OpenGL for that matter), but the vtkTextureMapToCylinder class and the TCL example of how to use it are good places to get started.
Please download iCarousel. It has many types of cylindrical effects in it.Use whichever is useful for you.