I'm using opengl+glut and wondering if there is a library out there that can render text to a buffer in a format consistent with opengl textures.
Check out FTGL. It uses FreeType to render text to textures, and can also create polygons if you feel like it. The tutorial shows the basic usage nicely.
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I am working on developing some FxPlug plugins for Motion and FCP X. Ultimately, I'd like to have them render in Metal as Apple is deprecating OpenGL.
I'm currently using CoreImage, and while I've been able to use the CoreImage functionality to do Metal processing outside of the FxPlug SDK, FxPlug only provides me the frame as an OpenGL texture. I've tried just passing this into the CoreImage filter, but I end up getting this error:
Cannot render image (with an input GL texture) using a metal-DG context.
After a bit of research, I found that I can supposedly use CVPixelBuffers to share textures between the two, but after trying to write code utilizing this method for a while, I've come to the belief that this was intended as a way to WRITE (as in, create from scratch) to a shared buffer, but not convert between. While this may be incorrect, I cannot find a way to get the existing GL texture to exist in a CVPixelBuffer.
TL;DR: I've found ways to get a resulting Metal or OpenGL texture FROM a CVPixelBuffer, but I cannot find a way to create a CVPixelBuffer from an existing OpenGL texture. My heart is not set on this method, as my ultimate goal is to simply convert from OpenGL to Metal, then back to OpenGL (ideally in an efficient way).
Has anyone else found a way to work with FxPlug with Metal? Is there a good way to convert from an OpenGL texture to Metal/CVPixelBuffer?
I have written an FxPlug that uses both OpenGL textures and Metal textures. The thing you're looking for is an IOSurface. They are textures that can be used with either Metal or OpenGL, though they have some limitations. As such, if you already have a Metal or OpenGL texture, you must copy it into an IOSurface to use it with the other system.
To create an IOSurface you can either use CVPixelBuffers (by including the kCVPixelBufferIOSurfacePropertiesKey) or you can directly create one using the IOSurface class defined in <IOSurface/IOSurfaceObjC.h>.
Once you have an IOSurface, you can copy your OpenGL texture into it by getting an OpenGL texture from the IOSurface via CGLTexImageIOSurface2D() (defined in <OpenGL/CGLIOSurface.h>). You then take that texture and use it as the backing texture for an FBO. You can, for example, draw a textured quad into it using the input FxTexture as the texture. Be sure the call glFlush() when done!
Next take the IOSurface and create a MTLTexture from it via -[MTLDevice newTextureWithDescriptor:ioSurface:plane:] (described here). You'll want to create an output IOSurface to draw into and also create a MTLTexture from it. Do your Metal rendering into the output MTLTexture. Next, take the output IOSurface and create an OpenGL texture out of it via CGLTexImageIOSurface2D(). Now copy that OpenGL texture into the output FxTexture either by using it as the backing of a texture-backed FBO or whatever other method you prefer.
As you can see, the downside of this is that each render requires 2 copies - 1 of the input into an IOSurface and 1 of the output IOSurface into the output texture the app gives you. The other downside is that this is probably all moot, as with Apple having announced publicly that they're ending support for OpenGL, they're probably working on a Metal-based solution already. It may be extra work to do it all yourself. (Though the upside is that you can use that same code in other host applications that only support OpenGL.)
Now I work on .obj loader for my 3d editor and plan to build it on Assimp. In my editor meshes will have a quad wireframe above triangulated polygons and have possibility to take both triangles forming a poltgon. But I know Assimp rebuild data for Opengl-ready and don't let to use quads. In my plan to stay data as .obj (quads) and do not triangulate it. If I remove aiProcess_Triangulate my render will corrupt and it doesn't render correctly. Which is a best way to stay data as quads without duplicate data with possibility to interact with it, and to prepare it for rendering? Can Assimp provide this option? Maybe only one way is to make loader myself?
depends of what you mean by load. GL_QUADS removed in 3.1+ and renderer wouldn't recognise it,but for scene building it's still useful.I can say that only trouble with own obj loader i'd have for now is sscanf and float,coz sscanf wanna no dot but comma delimeter. https://rocketgit.com/user/bowler17/gl/source/tree/branch/wrench
I learn OpenGL under Linux platform. Recently, I try to use texts created by glutBitmapCharacter() as the texture of some quadrics objects provided by glu or glut. However, glutBitmapCharacter() does not return a pointer so that I can't feed it to the glTexImage2D(). I had google it for quite a while, but all I found is some topic related to Android SDK which I have no experience to it.
All I can think of is to render texts and read it form buffer using glReadPixels(), then save it to a file. Next, read the pixels back from the file and refer it to a pointer. Finally, draw 3D objects with these texts as the texture (i.e. feed the pointer to the glTexImage2D()).
However, it's kind of silly. What I want to ask is: Are there some other alternative way to this?
Applying text on top of a 3D surface is not trivial with pure OpenGL. GLUT does not provide any tools for that. One possible option would be for you to implement your own text rendering methods, possibly loading glyphs using Freetype then create a texture with the glyphs and apply that texture to the polygons. Freetype-GL is a tiny helper library that would facilitate a lot if you were to do that.
Another option would be to again load the text glyphs into a texture and then apply them as decals over the geometry. That way you could still simulate a 2D text drawing in a flat surface (the decal) and then apply that on top of a 3D object.
I'm using cairo (http://cairographics.org) in combination with an OpenGL based 3D graphics library.
I'm currently using the 3D library on Windows, but I'm hoping to receive an answer that is platform independent.
This is all done in c++.
I've got the straight forward approach working which is to use cairo_image_surface_create in combination with glTexImage2D to get an OpenGL texture.
However, from what I've been able to gather from the documentation cairo_image_surface_create uses a CPU-based renderer and writes the output to main memory.
I've come to understand cairo has a new OpenGL based renderer which renders its output directly on the GPU, but I'm unable to find concrete details on how to use it.
(I've found some details on the glitz-renderer, but it seems to be deprecated and removed).
I've checked the surface list at: http://www.cairographics.org/manual/cairo-surfaces.html, but I feel I'm missing the obvious.
My question is: How do I create a cairo surface that renders directly to an OpenGL texture?
Do note: I'll need to be able to use the texture directly (without copying) to display the cairo output on screen.
As of 2015, Cairo GL SDL2 is probably the best way to use Cairo GL
https://github.com/cubicool/cairo-gl-sdl2
If you are on an OS like Ubuntu where cairo is not compiled with GL you will need to compile your own copy and let cairo-gl-sdl2 know where it is.
The glitz renderer has been replaced by the experimental cairo-gl backend.
You'll find a mention of it in:
http://cairographics.org/OpenGL/
Can't say if it's stable enough to be used though.
Once you have a gl backend working, you can render into a Framebuffer Object to render directly in a given texture.
I did it using GL_BGRA.
int tex_w = cairo_image_surface_get_width(surface);
int tex_h = cairo_image_surface_get_height(surface);
unsigned char* data = cairo_image_surface_get_data(surface);
then do
glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, 4, tex_w,tex_h, 0,GL_BGRA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, data);
when you create the texture.
Use glTexSubImage2D(...) to update th texture when the image content changes. For speed
set the filters for the texture to GL_NEAREST
I'm trying to convert an openGL [edit: "card that I drew"(?):) thx unwind]containing a lot of textures (nothing moving) into one PNG file that I can use in another part of the framework I'm working with. Is there a C++ library that does that?
thanks!
If you simply mean "take a scene rendered by OpenGL and save it as an image," then it is fairly straightforward. You need to read the scene with glReadPixels(), and then convert that data to an image format such as PNG (http://www.opengl.org/resources/faq/technical/miscellaneous.htm).
There are also more efficient ways of achieving this, such as using FBOs. Instead of rendering the scene directly into the framebuffer, you can render it to a texture via an FBO, then render that texture as a full-screen quad. You can then take this texture and save it to a file (using glGetTexImage, for example).
What is an "OpenGL file"? OpenGL is a graphics API, it doesn't specify any file formats. Do you mean a DDS file, or something?
There are better ways to make a compose texture than drawing them with the graphics card. This is really something you would want to do before hand on the cpu, store and then use as and when you need it with opengl