I'm working with an orthographic view in three.js/WebGL renderer, and I want a magnifying glass that tracks with the user mouse. I'm looking for the best way of doing this that's efficient.
When working with html5 canvas raw commands, this was easy: I simply defined a circular clip region, zoomed my coordinates, and re-drew the whole scene. With 3d objects, it's less obvious how do to it.
The method I've found so far is to do the following:
Define a second camera that looks into the zoomed region. Set the orthographic clip coordinates to be small so that it doesn't need to do much work
Create a THREE.WebGLRenderTarget
Tell the renderer and all my line textures that the resolution is about to change
Render the scene into the RenderTarget
Add a CircleGeometry as a MeshObject at the spot at the mouse position (in world coordinate but above the rest of the scene, close to the camera). Call this the lens.
Give the lens the WebGLRenderTarget as a texture.
Go back to my default camera, reset all my resolution parameters, and redraw the scene with the 'lens' object added.
This works (see image below) but I'm worried about parts of it:
I have to render twice per frame
Lines don't draw well, because the resolution problems. I have to keep track of all materials that need to know screen resolution and update all of them twice per screen render.
Related problems:
I want to overlay some plot axes on top of this, and possibly gridlines. These would change as the view pans. I'm not sure if I should make these 3d objects, or do it in a 2d canvas context I lay overtop.
I want to overlay some plot lines, and have them show up sensibly in the zoomed view. "Sensible" here is hard to figure out: I don't want them too fat in the zoomed view, but I also don't want to scale them up as much as the image detail (which is being rendered as a texture onto Plane objects behind).
This is a long post, but I'm still new to three.js and looking for good ideas.
Related
I have an A-Frame scene that contains, among others, a <canvas> element that is the material source for a 3D scene object. I can paint on the canvas programmatically, and it shows up as texture. So far, so good.
However, I'd now also like to enable the user to paint something on the canvas using the controllers. I have added two raycasters/controls:
<a-entity laser-controls="hand: left" raycaster="objects: table2"></a-entity>
<a-entity laser-controls="hand: right" raycaster="objects: table2"></a-entity>
And on the table2 object, I have added a raycaster-listen mixin as described in https://aframe.io/docs/1.3.0/components/raycaster.html#listening-for-raycaster-intersection-data-change.
This works in so far as I get the console log entries with the world coordinates of the intersection point, but I'm absolutely stuck at how to get from the world coordinates back to the canvas coordinates I need to actually paint in the right spot.
In addition, it seems no canvas draw commands I issue in the raycaster-listen tick callback actually have any visible effect (regardless of coordinates).
Any hints appreciated!
As usual, I figured it out the next day 😉
[...] I'm absolutely stuck at how to get from the world coordinates back to the canvas coordinates I need to actually paint in the right spot.
Solution found at https://discourse.threejs.org/t/convert-camera-frustrum-to-uv-coordinate-on-texture/16791/2 - just use intersection.uv which actually contains the normalized texture coordinates of the intersection point. Scale by canvas width/height and you're done.
[...] it seems no canvas draw commands I issue in the raycaster-listen tick callback actually have any visible effect.
Solution found at aframe not rendering lottie json texture mapped to canvas but works in three.js - set texture.needsUpdate = true; in the tick callback after drawing on the canvas.
Is it possible to know what area of the material is rendered on the display? I think Three.js already doing this right?
I trying to make Zoom level. When someone zooming it will become a good resolution.
I making CUBE using 6 planes and I’m trying to know the coordinate of the material and which areas are rendered on display.
The below example shows on the display only some areas of TOP, some areas of RIGHT and FRONT.
If I know which coordinate of material is rendered on the display, I’ll draw a good resolution of the image on the canvas.
Thank you,
I need a way to render a sprite always over top of a 3DObject, but it also must disappear behind it when the camera is rotated.
I first tried disabling the depth-buffer write but this will always render the Sprite in front.
Is there a way to hide it when its behind, but prevent clipping with the Object?
Edit 1:
The Problem is not exactly about z-fighting because the depthbuffer values of the sprite and the object are not equal.
The Sprite is a Billboard, so it will always face the camera, but it clips with the object, when rotating the camera.
Thank you for your help
I have an existing WebGL canvas that is being rendered without using ThreeJS, and is for all intents and purposes a black box to me, apart from two facts: (1) I have access to the underlying webgl canvas DOM element and can position and resize it on the screen, and (2) I know the properties of the camera for the scene, and get updates on every render cycle for that camera.
The problem I need to solve can be simplified to the following: I need to have my own separate ThreeJS canvas that displays both the black box canvas data, and then elements that I draw, like a cube for a simple example. I can already easily overlay the two canvases, set the transparency on my canvas for everything but the cube, and then align the two with the camera events from the black box library. This works quite well.
The issue with this is that when I draw my objects, like a cube, they don't respect the depth buffer of the black box canvas. So I might have a cube that is properly aligned with the backing scene and movements of the scene, but then it isn't properly masked when something in the black box canvas is closer to the camera than the cube. My thought is that I need to solve this in one of two ways: (1) I can have my renderer write to the other canvas with autoClear = false and preserveDrawingBuffer = true, or (2) I can somehow copy the depth buffer from the black box canvas into my canvas, and then set up my renderer so that it respects the new depth buffer.
I haven't been successful with either approach yet, so I'm wondering if this is possible, and if so which of the above approaches, or what other approach, can solve this problem?
--Edit--
See https://jsfiddle.net/zdxyoajb/ for angular/typescript implementation of the above attempts. In the following animate loop, if I comment out the overlayRenderer lines, the below sphere will be red and offset from the center (as it should be), but if I don't comment the lines, I get the below image. I also get the following error:
WebGL: INVALID_OPERATION: uniformMatrix4fv: location is not from current program
animate() {
requestAnimationFrame(() => this.animate());
this.blackBoxCamera.copy(this.overlayCamera);
this.blackBoxRenderer.render(this.blackBoxScene, this.blackBoxCamera);
this.overlayRenderer.state.reset();
this.overlayRenderer.render(this.overlayScene, this.overlayCamera);
}
I've got a question about getting sprites to work with three.js using perspective and orthogonal cameras.
I have a building being rendered in one scene. At one location in the scene all of the levels are stacked on top of each other to give a 3D view of the building and an orthogonal camera is being used to view it. In another part of the scene, I have just the selected level of the building being shown and a perspective camera is being used. The screen is divided between the two views. The idea being the user selects a level from the building view and a more detailed map of that selected level is shown on the other part of the screen.
I played around with sprites for a little bit and as far as I understand it; if the sprite is being viewed with a perspective camera then the sprite's scale property is actual it's size property and if a sprite is being viewed with an orthogonal camera the scale property scales the sprite according to the view port.
I placed the sprite where both cameras can see it and this seems to be the case. If I scale the sprite by 0.5, then the sprite takes up half the orthogonal camera's view port and I can't see it with the perspective camera (presumably because for it, the sprite is 0.5px x 0.5px and is either rounded to 0px (not rendered, or 1px, effectively invisible). If I scale the sprite by say 50, the the perspective camera can see it (presumably because it's a 50px x 50px square) and the orthogonal camera is over taken by the sprite (presumably because it's being scaled by 50 times the view port).
Is my understanding correct?
I ask because in the scene I'm rendering, the building and detailed areas are ~1000 units apart on the x-axis. If I place a sprite somewhere on the detail map I need it to be ~35x35 pixels and when I do this it works fine for the detail view but building view is overtaken. I played with the numbers and it seems that if I scale the sprite by 4, it starts to show up on my building view, even though there's a 1000 unit distance between the views and the sprite isn't visible with the perspective camera.
So. If my understanding is correct then I need to either use separate scenes; have a much bigger gap between views; use the same camera type for both views; or not use sprites.
There are basically two different ways you can use sprites, either with 2D screen coordinates or 3D scene coordinates. Perhaps scene coordinates are what you need? For examples of both, check out the example at:
http://stemkoski.github.io/Three.js/Sprites.html
and in particular, when you zoom in and zoom out in that demo, notice that the sprites in-scene will change size, while the others do not.
Hope this helps!