Is there a way i can debug a glsl shader? including like breakpoints and data tracking
i seen simple ones that let me see what shaders make my shade programs but nothing i can put break points in.
I need to check out values of matrices and just throwing a glFragColor will not work since there's so many values to be compared and checked.
is there a simple way of doing this? besides me just writing down what values i think i might have and doing my math out else where.
it's really annoying when I'm trying to understand all of OpenGL and knowing how to navigate around DirectX. I can see why some people get scared away from OpenGL when resources get hard to find.
According to the development updates for NVIDIA Nsight, they recently added features for GLSL debugging (https://developer.nvidia.com/nsight-visual-studio-edition-3_0-new-features). I would look there first. Also glslDevil (http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/glsldevil/index.html) looks good. I haven't tried either program myself, so can't give first hand experience about quality. I have been impressed by NVIDIA's support for debugging in CUDA though, so have high expectations.
I'm trying to tesselate a simple triangle using the Golang OpenGL bindings
The library doesn't claim support for the tesselation shaders, but I looked through the source code, and adding the correct bindings didn't seem terribly tricky. So I branched it and tried adding the correct constants in gl_defs.go.
The bindings still compile just fine and so does my program, it's when I actually try to use the new bindings that things go strange. The program goes from displaying a nicely circling triangle to a black screen whenever I actually try to include the tesselation shaders.
I'm following along with the OpenGL Superbible (6th edition) and using their shaders for this project, so I don't image I'm using broken shaders (they don't spit out an error log, anyway). But in case the shaders themselves could be at fault, they can be found in the setupProgram() function here.
I'm pretty sure my graphics card supports tesselation because printing the openGL version returns 4.4.0 NVIDIA 331.38
.
So my questions:
Is there any reason adding go bindings for tesselation wouldn't work? The bindings seem quite straightforward.
Am I adding the new bindings incorrectly?
If it should work, why is it not working for me?
What am I doing wrong here?
Steps that might be worth taking:
Your driver and video card may support tessellation shaders, but the GL context that your binding is returning for you might be for an earlier version of OpenGL. Try glGetString​(GL_VERSION​) and see what you get.
Are you calling glGetError basically everywhere and actually checking its values? Does this binding provide error return values? If so, are you checking those?
I'm trying to replicate the effect of Cathode but i'm not really aware of any rendering effects in SDL. Does anyone know the technique used in Cathode? Are they using OpenGL and shaders maybe?
If you are still interested in the subject I'm working on a similar project. The effects were obtained by using GLSL shaders.
You can grab the source code here: https://github.com/Swordifish90/cool-old-term/
The shaders strings might not be extremely readable due to the extensive use of the ternary operators (needed to customize the appearance) but they should give you a really good idea.
If you poke around a bit in the application bundle, you'll find that the only relevant framework is GLKit which, according to Apple, will "reduce the effort required to create new shader-based apps".
There's also a bunch of ".fragdata", ".vertdata", and ".glsldata" files, which are encrypted.
Very unfortunate for you.
So I would say: Yes, it's OpenGL shaders all the way.
Unfortunately, since the shaders are encrypted, you're going to have to locate suitable algorithms elsewhere.
(Perhaps it's possible to use the OpenGL debugging and profiling tools to capture the shader source as it is compiled, but I doubt it.)
You may have realized that Android phones have (had?) such animations when you put them to sleep. That code is available under in file named ElectronBeam.java.
However it is Java code and uses GLES 1.0 with GLES 1.1 Extenstions but algorithm for bending screen should be understandable.
Seems to be based on GLTerminal which uses OpenGL, it would have to use OpenGL and shaders for speed.
I guess the fastest approximation would be to render the text to buffers within OpenGL and use a deformed 2d grid to create the "rounded corners" radial distortion.
But it would take a lot of work to add all the features that cathode has, not to mention to run them quickly.
I suspect emulating a CRT perfectly is a bit like emulating an analog synth perfectly - hard to impossible.
If you want to work quickly and not killing the CPU, the GPU is the best solution! So pixel shaders. pixel shaders can do all of these effects. Once I made such an application. I wrote it in Silverlight, but it does not matter, I used the pixel shader.
Suggests to write this in Qt4 and add to the QWidget pixel shader effects.
So I'm at a point that I should begin lighting my flatly colored models. The test application is a test case for the implementation of only latest methods so I realized that ideally it should be implementing ray tracing (since theoretically, it might be ideal for real time graphics in a few years).
But where do I start?
Assume I have never done lighting in old OpenGL, so I would be going directly to non-deprecated methods.
The application has currently properly set up vertex buffer objects, vertex, normal and color input and it correctly draws and transforms models in space, in a flat color.
Is there a source of information that would take one from flat colored vertices to all that is needed for a proper end result via GLSL? Ideally with any other additional lighting methods that might be required to complement it.
I would not advise to try actual ray tracing in OpenGL because you need a lot hacks and tricks for that and, if you ask me, there is not a point in doing this anymore at all.
If you want to do ray tracing on GPU, you should go with any GPGPU language, such as CUDA or OpenCL because it makes things a lot easier (but still, far from trivial).
To illustrate the problem a bit further:
For raytracing, you need to trace the secondary rays and test for intersection with the geometry. Therefore, you need access to the geometry in some clever way inside your shader, however inside a fragment shader, you cannot access the geometry, if you do not store it "coded" into some texture. The vertex shader also does not provide you with this geometry information natively, and geometry shaders only know the neighbors so here the trouble already starts.
Next, you need acceleration data-structures to get any reasonable frame-rates. However, traversing e.g. a Kd-Tree inside a shader is quite difficult and if I recall correctly, there are several papers solely on this problem.
If you really want to go this route, though, there are a lot papers on this topic, it should not be too hard to find them.
A ray tracer requires extremely well designed access patterns and caching to reach a good performance. However, you have only little control over these inside GLSL and optimizing the performance can get really tough.
Another point to note is that, at least to my knowledge, real time ray tracing on GPUs is mostly limited to static scenes because e.g. kd-trees only work (well) for static scenes. If you want to have dynamic scenes, you need other data-structures (e.g. BVHs, iirc?) but you constantly need to maintain those. If I haven't missed anything, there is still a lot of research currently going on just on this issue.
You may be confusing some things.
OpenGL is a rasterizer. Forcing it to do raytracing is possible, but difficult. This is why raytracing is not "ideal for real time graphics in a few years". In a few years, only hybrid systems will be viable.
So, you have three possibities.
Pure raytracing. Render only a fullscreen quad, and in your fragment shader, read your scene description packed in a buffer (like a texture), traverse the hierarchy, and compute ray-triangles intersections.
Hybrid raytracing. Rasterize your scene the normal way, and use raytracing in your shader on some parts of the scene that really requires it (refraction, ... but it can be simultated in rasterisation)
Pure rasterization. The fragment shader does its normal job.
What exactly do you want to achieve ? I can improve the answer depending on your needs.
Anyway, this SO question is highly related. Even if this particular implementation has a bug, it's definetely the way to go. Another possibility is openCL, but the concept is the same.
As for 2019 ray tracing is an option for real time rendering but requires high end GPUs most users don't have.
Some of these GPUs are designed specifically for ray tracing.
OpenGL currently does not support hardware accelerated ray tracing.
DirectX 12 on windows does have support for it. It is recommended to wait a few more years before creating a ray tracing only renderer although it is possible using DirectX 12 with current desktop and laptop hardware. Support from mobile may take a while.
Opengl (glsl) can be used for ray (path) tracing. however there are few better options: Nvidia OptiX (Cuda toolkit -- cross platform), directx 12 (with Nvidia ray tracing extension DXR -- windows only), vulkan (nvidia ray tracing extension VKR -- cross platform, and widely used), metal (only works on MacOS), falcor (DXR, VKR, OptiX based framework), Intel Embree (CPU ray tracing only).
I found some of the other answers to be verbose and wordy. For visual examples that YES, functional ray tracers absolutely CAN be built using the OpenGL API, I highly recommend checking out some of the projects people are making on https://www.shadertoy.com/ (Warning: lag)
To answer the topic: OpenGL has no RTX extension, but Vulkan has, and interop is possible. Example here: https://github.com/nvpro-samples/gl_vk_raytrace_interop
As for the actual question: To light the triangles, there are tons of techniques, look up for "forward", "forward+" or "deferred" renderers. The technique to be used depends on you goal. The simplest and most good-looking these days, is image based lighting (IBL) with physically based shading (PBS). Basically, you use a cubemap and blur it more or less depending on the glossiness of the object. For a simple object viewer you don't need more.
I've been reading a lot about deferred shading and want to try and get into it. Problem is I can't find a sample which demonstrates how deferred shading can support so many lights simultaneously - I found one demo which was very simple with a single light in Code Sampler and an nVidia HDR sample butnothing beyond that.
Would anyone know where I should go for a good introductory tutorial (with code) on how to have deffered shading with lighting? I can make it work with one light but one light is a bit too simple (rather obviously :P). Also I only know how to make directional lights in deferred shading code and it's nice an dall but somewhat different to regular ways of rendering lights so I was wondering if there wree tutorials or anything I could find or just reading material that would help me figure out how writing shaders and special fx in deferred rendering works?
Thanks fo rany help!
NVIDIA stuff is usually good: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/6800_leagues_deferred_shading.html
Here's a reasonable XNA tutorial as well: http://www.ziggyware.com/readarticle.php?article_id=155
In terms of blogs: Wolfgang Engel's is a good start, and Christer Ericson recently posted a bunch of links (in the Graphics section of his "Catching Up Part 2" post).
Oh, and the G-Buffer paper is required reading too. Less practical, but a good review of the process and rationale.