I am making a drawing program in Three.js. I can draw lines on various axes and can rotate them around. good so far
what I need is a pattern to follow in order to add to a line (source_line) along a one of its axes as the mouse draws the new line. I am just learning graphics programming and am unsure of the correct way to go about this. I've looked at some of the examples but don't see much about dynamically drawn vertices from mouse events w/r/to other objects.
What is the best way to make my mouse draw in proximity to the source_line vertex(versus whatever the mouse.unproject(camera) determines)? Do I edit the camera near/far params or translate the mouse vector during the onmousemove (via distance vector)? In this fiddle, you can see how I told the new_line vertex to begin with the source_line z setting- it 'works', but I know it isn't the right approach.
http://jsfiddle.net/cindy/zc34qn59/2/
//in mousedown
if (DRAWMODE){
bIsDrawing=true;
if ( currentIntersectedPoint !== undefined ) {
//yes, we have an object of interest/ source_line to add to
initNewLine(currentIntersectedPoint, false);
}else{
initNewLine(mouse, true);
}
or, would I calculate the overall bounding box of the source_line, get the normals and perhaps do something like turning the cursor into a plane that tilts perpendicularly along the source_line axes (like Tilt brush seems to do)?
any pointers (haha pun intended) are appreciated
Related
I am trying to achieve movement of an object on walls, instead of only one plane. In this example, an object dragged on walls by using:
intersects = raycaster.intersectObjects([walls]);
object.position.copy(intersects[0].point);
However, with this method, the object jumps because the object's center moves to the mouse. There is a related question and helpful JSFiddle for dragging on one plane without jumpin Would you please help me to modify it for multiples planes (walls)? Thanks
After reading your comment, I think what you're looking for is you want the object to animate to the position. You can do this a few ways. The "threejs" way is to move it each frame (within the animate/update loop). You could do this with Vector3.lerp by storing intersects[0].point as your target location and lerping your object.position to it each frame. Another option is to use an animation library like animejs or gsap.
I have a grid of points (object3D's using THREE.Points) in my Three.js scene, with a model sat on top of the grid, as seen below. In code the model is called default mesh and uses a merged geometry for performance reasons:
I'm trying to work out which of the points in the grid my perspective camera can see at any given point i.e. every time the camera position is update using my orbital controls.
My first idea was to use raycasting to create a ray between the camera and each point in the grid. Then I can find which rays are being intersected with the model and remove the points corresponding to those rays from a list of all the points, thus leaving me with a list of points the camera can see.
So far so good, the ray creation and intersection code is placed in the render loop (as it has to be updated whenever the camera is moved), and therefore it's horrendously slow (obviously).
gridPointsVisible = gridPoints.geometry.vertices.slice(0);
startPoint = camera.position.clone();
//create the rays from each point in the grid to the camera position
for ( var point in gridPoints.geometry.vertices) {
direction = gridPoints.geometry.vertices[point].clone();
vector.subVectors(direction, startPoint);
ray = new THREE.Raycaster(startPoint, vector.clone().normalize());
if(ray.intersectObject( defaultMesh ).length > 0){
gridPointsVisible.pop(gridPoints.geometry.vertices[point]);
}
}
In the example model shown there are around 2300 rays being created, and the mesh has 1500 faces, so the rendering takes forever.
So I 2 questions:
Is there a better of way of finding which objects the camera can see?
If not, can I speed up my raycasting/intersection checks?
Thanks in advance!
Take a look at this example of GPU picking.
You can do something similar, especially easy since you have a finite and ordered set of spheres. The idea is that you'd use a shader to calculate (probably based on position) a flat color for each sphere, and render to an off-screen render target. You'd then parse the render target data for colors, and be able to map back to your spheres. Any colors that are visible are also visible spheres. Any leftover spheres are hidden. This method should produce results faster than raycasting.
WebGLRenderTarget lets you draw to a buffer without drawing to the canvas. You can then access the render target's image buffer pixel-by-pixel (really color-by-color in RGBA).
For the mapping, you'll parse that buffer and create a list of all the unique colors you see (all non-sphere objects should be some other flat color). Then you can loop through your points--and you should know what color each sphere should be by the same color calculation as the shader used. If a point's color is in your list of found colors, then that point is visible.
To optimize this idea, you can reduce the resolution of your render target. You may lose points only visible by slivers, but you can tweak your resolution to fit your needs. Also, if you have fewer than 256 points, you can use only red values, which reduces the number of checked values to 1 in every 4 (only check R of the RGBA pixel). If you go beyond 256, include checking green values, and so on.
Every technique that I've found or tried to render outline in OpenGL uses some function that is not avaliable on OpenGL ES...
Actually what I could do is set depthMask to false, draw the object as a 3 pixels wide line wireframe, reenable the depthMask and then drawing my object. It doesnt work for me because it outline only the external parts of my object, not the internals.
The following image shows two outlines, the left one is a correct outline, the right one is what I got.
So, can someone direct me to a technique that doesn't is avaliable on OpenGL ES?
Haven't done one of these for a while, but I think you're almost there! What I would recommend is this:
Keep depthMask enabled, but flip your backface culling to only render the "inside" of the object.
Draw the mesh with that shader that pushes all the verts out along their normals slightly and as a solid color (your outline color, probably black). Make sure that you're drawing solid triangles and not just GL_LINES.
Flip the backface culling back to normal again and re-render the mesh like usual.
The result is that the outlines will only be visible around the points on your mesh where the triangles start to turn away from the camera. This gives you some nice, simple outlines around things like noses, chins, lips, and other internal details.
Context: trying to take THREE.js and use it to display conic sections.
Method: creating a mesh of vertices and then connect face4's to all of them. Used two faces to produce a front and back side so that when the conic section rotates it won't matter from which angle the camera views it.
Problems encountered: 1. Trying to find a good way to create a intuitive mouse rotation scheme. If you think in spherical coordinates, then it feels like just making up/down change phi and left/right change phi would work. But that requires that you can move the camera. As far as I can tell, there is no way to change actively change the rotation of anything besides the objects. Does anyone know how to change the rotation of the camera or scene? 2. Is there a way to graph functions that is better than creating a mesh? If the mesh has many points then it is too slow, and if the mesh has few points then you cannot easily make out the shape of the conic sections.
Any sort of help would be most excellent.
I'm still starting to learn Three.js, so I'm not sure about the second part of your question.
For the first part, to change the camera, there is a very good way, which could also include zooming and moving the scene: the trackball camera.
For the exact code and how to use it, you can view:
https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/blob/master/examples/webgl_trackballcamera_earth.html
At the botton of this page (http://mrdoob.com/122/Threejs) you can see the example in action (the globe in the third row from the bottom).
There is an orbit control script for the three.js camera.
I'm not sure if I understand the rotation bit. You do want to rotate an object, but you are correct, the rotation is relative.
When you rotate or move your camera, a matrix is calculated for that position/rotation, and it does indeed rotate the scene while keeping the camera static.
This is irrelevant though, because you work in model/world space, and you position your camera in it, the engine takes care of the rotations under the hood.
What you probably want is to set up an object, hook up your rotation with spherical coordinates, and link your camera as a child to this object. The translation along the cameras Z axis relative to the object should mimic your dolly (zoom is FOV change).
You can rotate the camera by changing its position. See the code I pasted here: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/79219/three-js-camera-turning-leftside-right
As others are saying OrbitControls.js is an intuitive way for users to manage the camera.
I tackled many of the same issues when building formulatoy.net. I used Morphing Geometries since I found mapping 3d math functions to a UV surface to require v little code and it allowed an easy way to implement different coordinate systems (Cartesian, spherical, cylindrical).
You could use particles instead of a mesh I suppose but a mesh seems best. The lattice material is not too useful if you're trying to understand a surface mathematically. At this point I'm thinking of drawing my own X,Y lines on the surface (or phi, theta lines etc) to better demonstrate cross-sections.
Hope that helps.
You can use trackball controls by which you can zoom in and out of an object,rotate the object,pan it.In trackball controls you are moving the camera around the object.Object still rotates with respect to the screen or renderer centre (0,0,0).
Is there a way to draw a line along a curved path with a gradient that varies in a direction perpendicular to the direction of the line? I am using the GDI+ framework for my graphics.
The simple answer is no. You can create a GraphicsPath in order to describe what you would like to draw, using AddPoint/AddLine/AddBezier and so forth as needed to describe the complex path of what you want to draw. When you draw the path you can provide a Brush which can be something like LinearGradientBrush or RadialGradientBrush. Neither of those gradient brushes reacts to the actual path being drawn in the sense of changing direction as the drawing occurs. You have to specify the angles etc as constant for the entire gradient area.
One possible method you can use is to set the clip region of the Graphics object to be that of the line only. Then draw a Linear Gradient over the extremes of the line e.g.
GraphicsPath gp = new GraphicsPath();
gp.AddArc(); // etc...
graphics.SetClip( gp );
graphics.FillRectangle( myLinearGradientBrush, gp.GetBounds());
The above code might give you what you are looking for.