How to apply texture to a part of a sphere - opengl

I am trying to put a texture in only a part of a sphere.
I have a sphere representing the earth with its topography and a terrain texture for a part of the globe, say satellite map for Italy.
I want to show that terrain over the part of the sphere where Italy is.
I'm creating my sphere drawing a set of triangle strips.
As far as I understand, if I want to use a texture I need to specify a texture coord for each vertex (glTexCoord2*). But I do not have a valid texture for all of them.
So how do I tell OpenGL to skip texture for those vertexes?

I'll assume you have two textures or a color attribute for the remainder of the sphere ("not Italy").
The easiest way to do this would be to create a texture that covers the whole sphere, but use the alpha channel. For example, use alpha=1 for "not italy" and alpha=0 for "italy". Then you could do something like this in your fragment shader (pseudo-code, I did not test anything):
...
uniform sampler2D extra_texture;
in vec2 texture_coords;
out vec3 final_color;
...
void main() {
...
// Assume color1 to be the base color for the sphere, no matter how you get it (attribute/texture), it has at least 3 components.
vec4 color2 = texture(extra_texture, texture_coords);
final_color = mix(vec3(color2), vec3(color1), color2.a);
}
The colors in mix are combined as follows, mix(x,y,a) = x*(1-a)+y*a, this is done component wise for vectors. So you can see that if alpha=1 ("not Italy"), color1 will be picked, and vice versa for alpha=0.
You could extend this to multiple layers using texture arrays or something similar, but I'd keep it simple 2-layer to begin with.

Related

How could I remove this colour interpolation artefact across a quad?

I've been reading up on a vulkan tutorial online, here: https://vulkan-tutorial.com. This question should apply to any 3D rendering API however.
In this lesson https://vulkan-tutorial.com/Vertex_buffers/Index_buffer, the tutorial had just covered using indexed rendering in order to reuse vertices when drawing the following simple two-triangle quad:
The four vertices were assigned red, green, blue and white colours as vertex attributes and the fragment shader had those colours interpolated across the triangles as expected. This leads to the ugly visual artefact on the diagonal where the two triangles meet. As I understand it, the interpolation will only be happening across each triangle, and so where the two triangles meet the interpolation doesn't cross the boundary.
How could you, generally in any rendering api, have the colours smoothly interpolated over all four corners for a nice colour wheel affect without having this hard line?
This is a correct output from a graphics api point of view. You can achieve your own desired output (a color gradient) within the shader code. You basically need to interpolate the colors yourself. To get an idea on how to do this, here is a glsl piece of code from this answer:
uniform vec2 resolution;
void main(void)
{
vec2 p = gl_FragCoord.xy / resolution.xy;
float gray = 1.0 - p.x;
float red = p.y;
gl_FragColor = vec4(red, gray*red, gray*red, 1.0);
}

Why is my GLSL shader rendering a cleavage?

I'm working on a deferred lighting technique in 2D, using a frame buffer to accumulate light sources using the GL_MAX blend equation.
Here's what I get when rendering one light source (the geometry is a quad without a texture, I'm only using a fragment shader for colouring) to my buffer:
Which is exactly what I want - attenuation from the light source. However, when two light sources are near each other, when they overlap, they seem to produce a lower RGB value where they meet, like so:
Why is there a darker line between the two? I was expecting that with GL_MAX blend equation they would smoothly blend into each other, using the maximal value of the fragments in each location.
Here's the setup for the FBO (using LibGDX):
Gdx.gl.glClearColor(0.14f, 0.14f, 0.19f, 1);
Gdx.gl.glClear(GL20.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);
Gdx.gl.glBlendEquation(GLMAX_BLEND_EQUATION);
Gdx.gl.glBlendFunc(GL20.GL_SRC_COLOR, GL20.GL_DST_COLOR);
Gdx.gl.glEnable(GL20.GL_BLEND);
I don't think the call to glBlendFunc is actually necessary when using this equation. GLMAX_BLEND_EQUATION is set to 0x8008.
varying vec2 v_texCoords;
varying vec2 v_positionRelativeToLight;
uniform sampler2D u_texture;
uniform vec3 u_lightPosition;
uniform vec3 u_lightColor;
void main() {
float distanceToLight = length(v_positionRelativeToLight);
float falloffVarA = 0.1;
float falloffVarB = 1.0;
float attenuation = 1.0 / (1.0 + (falloffVarA*distanceToLight) + (falloffVarB*distanceToLight*distanceToLight));
float minDistanceOrAttenuation = min(attenuation, 1.0-distanceToLight);
float combined = minDistanceOrAttenuation * attenuation;
gl_FragColor = vec4(combined, combined, combined, 1.0);
}
There are extra variables passed in there as this fragment shader is usually more complicated, but I've cut it down to just show how the attenuation and blending is behaving.
This happens between every light source that I render where they meet - rather than the colour that I'm expecting, the meeting of two light sources - the equidistant point between the two quads, is a darker colour that I'm expecting. Any idea why and how to fix it?
This is the result of subtracting the first image from the second:
The background on the first isn't quite black, hence the yellowing on the right, but otherwise you can clearly see the black region on the left where original values were preserved, the darker arc where values from both lights were evaluated but the right was greater, then all the area on the right that the original light didn't touch.
I therefore think you're getting max-pick blending. But what you want is additive blending:
Gdx.gl.glBlendFunc(GL20.GL_ONE, GL20.GL_ONE);
... and leave the blend equation on the default of GL_FUNC_ADD.
Your result is the expected appearance for maximum blending (which is just like the lighten blend mode in Photoshop). The dark seam looks out of place perhaps because of the non-linear falloff of each light, but it's mathematically correct. If you introduce a light with a bright non-white color to it, it will look much more objectionable.
You can get around this if you render your lights to a frame buffer with inverted colors and multiplicative blending, and then render the frame buffer with inverted colors. Then the math works out to not have the seams, but it won't look unusually bright like what additive blending produces.
Use a pure white clear color on your frame buffer and then render the lights with the standard GL_ADD blend equation and the blend function GL_ONE_MINUS_DST_COLOR. Then render your FBO texture to the screen, inverting the colors again.
Two lights drawn using your method
Two lights drawn additively
Two lights, drawn sequentially with GL_ONE_MINUS_DST_COLOR, GL_ZERO and GL_ADD
The above result, inverted

3D Volume rendering and multiple point of view occlusion

I've a `W x H x D' volumetric data that is zero everywhere except for little spherical volumes containing 1.
I have written the shader to extract the "intersection" of that 3D volume with a generic object made of vertices.
Vertex shader
varying vec3 textureCoordinates;
uniform float objectSize;
uniform vec3 objectTranslation;
void main()
{
vec4 v=gl_Vertex;
textureCoordinates= vec3( ((v.xz-objectTranslation.xz)/objectSize+1.0)*0.5, ((v.y-objectTranslation.y)/objectSize+1.0)*0.5);
gl_Position = gl_ModelViewProjectionMatrix*v;
}
Fragment shader
varying vec3 textureCoordinates;
uniform sampler3D volumeSampler;
void main()
{
vec4 uniformColor = vec4(1.0,1.0,0.0,1.0); //it's white
if ( textureCoordinates.x <=0.0 || textureCoordinates.x >= 1.0 || textureCoordinates.z <= 0.0 || textureCoordinates.z >= 1.0)
gl_FragColor =vec4(0.0,0.0,0.0,1.0); //Can be uniformColor to color again the thing
else
gl_FragColor = uniformColor*texture3D(volumeSampler, textureCoordinates);
}
In the OpenGL program, I'm looking the centered object with those almost-spherical patches of white on it from (0,100,0) eye coordinates, but I want that for another viewer (0,0,0) the spheres that lie on the same line-of-sight are correctly occluded, so that only the parts that I underlined in red in the picture are emitted.
Is this an application of raycasting or similar?
It seems what you want is occlusion culling, you have two main options to implement occlusion culling
Using GPU occlusion queries
This is essentially about asking the hardware if a certain fragment will be draw or not if not you can cull the object.
Occlusion queries count the number of fragments (or samples) that pass the depth test, which is useful to determine visibility of objects.
This algorithm is more complex than can be explained here, here is an excellent Nvidia article on the topic.
Using CPU ray casting
This is simply check each object (or possibly it's bounding volume), if a ray hits the object then it possibly hides other objects behind it. The objects need to be Spatially sorted using Octree or BSP Tree, so you don't end up checking every object and you only check objects near the camera.
For more on culling techniques check my answer here.
Is this an application of raycasting or similar?
This is in essence the raytracing shadow algorithm: Once you've hit a (visible) surface with your view-ray, you take that point as point of origin for a trace toward the other point (a light source or whatever) and if you can reach that point (without) "bumping" into something else use that information as further input into rendering calculations.

GLSL passing texture coordinates from vertex shader

What I'm trying to accomplish: Drawing the depth map of my scene on top of my scene (so that objects closer are darker, and further away are lighter)
Problem: I don't seem to understand how to pass the right texture coordinates from my vertex shader to my fragment shader.
So I created my FBO, and the texture that the depth map gets drawn to... not that I'm entirely sure what I was doing, but whatever, it works. I tested drawing the texture using the fixed functionality pipeline, and it looks just like it's supposed to (the depth map that is).
But trying to use it in my shaders just isn't working...
Here's the part from my render method that binds the texture:
glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE7);
glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, depthTextureId);
glUniform1i(depthMapUniform, 7);
glUseProgram(shaderProgram);
look(); //updates my viewing matrix
box.render(); //renders box VBO
So... I think that's sort of right? Maybe? No clue why texture 7, that was just something that was in a tutorial I was checking...
And here's the important stuff from my vertex shader:
out vec4 ShadowCoord;
void main() {
gl_Position = PMatrix * (VMatrix * MMatrix) * gl_Vertex; //projection, view and model matrices
ShadowCoord = gl_MultiTexCoord0; //something I kept seeing in examples, was hoping it would work.
}
Aaand, fragment shader:
in vec4 ShadowCoord;
in vec3 Color; //passed from vertex shader, didn't include the code for it though. Just the vertex color.
out vec4 FragColor;
void main(
FragColor = vec4(texture2D(ShadowMap,shadowCoord.st).x * vec3(Color), 1.0);
Now the problem is that the coordinate that the fragment shader receives for the texture is always (0,0), or the bottom-left corner. I tried changing it to ShadowCoord = gl_MultiTexCoord7, because I figured maybe it had something to do with me putting the texture in slot number 7... but alas, the problem persisted. When the color of (0, 0) changes, so does the color of the entire scene, rather than being a change in color for only the appropriate pixel/fragment.
And that's what I'm hoping to get some insight on... how to pass the correct coordinates (I'd like for the corners of the texture to be the same coordinates as the corners of my screen). And yes, this is a beginners question... but I have been looking in the Orange Book, and the problem with it is that it's great on the GLSL side of things, but the OpenGL side of things is severely lacking in the examples that I could really use...
The input variable gl_MultiTexCoord0 (or 7) is the builtin per-vertex texture coordinate for the 0th (or 7th) texture coordinate, set by gl(Multi)TexCoord (when using immediate mode) or by glTexCoordPointer (when using arrays/VBOs).
But as your depth buffer is already in screen space, what you want is not a usual texture laid onto the object, but just the value in the texture for a specific pixel/fragment. So the vertex shader isn't involved in any way. Instead you just use the current fragment's screen space position as texture coordinate, that can be read in the fragment shader using gl_FragCoord. But keep in mind that this coordinate is in [0,w]x[0,h] and textures are accessed by normalized texture coordinates in [0,1]. So you have to divide the fragment's coordinate by the screen size:
uniform vec2 screenSize;
...
... texture2D(ShadowMap, gl_FragCoord.st/screenSize) ...
But you actually don't need two passes for this effect anyway, as you can just use the fragment's depth directly, without writing it into a texture. Instead of
texture2D(ShadowMap, gl_FragCoord.st/screenSize).x
you can just use
gl_FragCoord.z
which is nothing else than the fragment's depth value, that would have been written into the texture in the first pass. This way you completely spare the first depth-writing pass and the texture access in the second pass.

Texturing Spheres with Cubemaps (not reflection maps)

I want to texture a sphere with a cube map. So far my research has thrown up many many results on Google involving making OpenGL auto generate texture coordinates, but I want to generate my own coordinates.
Given an array of coordinates comprising the vertexes of an imperfect sphere (height mapped but essentially a sphere) centered on 0,0,0, how would one generate texture coordinates for a cube map?
Are you doing this via GLSL? In that case textureCube accepts a vec3 as texture coordinate, which is a unit vector on a sphere. In your case you would take the coordinate of your fragment with respect to the center of the sphere, normalize it and pass it as a coordinate. No need to worry about the internal representation as six two-dimensional textures.
uniform samplerCube cubemap;
varying vec3 pos; // position of the fragment w.r.t. the center of the sphere
/* ... */
vec4 color = textureCube(cubemap, normalize(pos).stp);
It works like that also in fixed-pipeline OpenGL.
By the way, here is how the coordinates are used internally: the largest coordinate in absolute value is used to select which one of the six textures is read from (the sign selects positive or negative). The other two coordinates are used to lookup the texel in the selected map, after being divided by the largest coordinate.