Check vertex visibility in OpenGL ES 2.0 - c++11

How can I check if vertex is visible in the most simple way?
If my vertex shader looks like:
void main(void) {
vec4 glPosition = vec4(VTPosition.x * VTAspectRatio, VTPosition.y, VTPosition.z, 1.0);
gl_Position = VTProjection * VTModelview * glPosition;
}
Can I check visibility on CPU the same way ?
Vector4 vertex = {0.5, 0.5, -1.0, 1.0};
vertex = projectionMatrix * modelViewMatrix * vertex;
if vertex x and y value is in range -1.0 .. 1.0 (viewport coordinates) it is visible

The output position of the vertex shader (gl_Position) will undergo perspective division to obtain NDC (Normalized Device Coordinates). In the NDC space, clipping is against the [-1.0, 1.0] range for all coordinates (1).
So to test if a given vertex will be clipped, you have to determine if gl_Position.xyz / gl_Position.w is in the range [-1.0, 1.0] for all coordinates. GLSL code to test this condition could look like this:
if (any(lessThan(gl_Position.xyz, vec3(-gl_Position.w))) ||
any(greaterThan(gl_Position.xyz, vec3(gl_Position.w))))
{
// vertex will be clipped
}
(1) Strictly speaking, clipping can be performed at various points in the rendering pipeline, as long as geometry outside the viewing volume ends up being clipped. But it's easiest to express in NDC.

Related

Calculating a transformation matrix to place an object on a sphere in glsl

I'm trying generate some matrices to place trees on a planet on the GPU. The position of each tree is predetermined - based on a biome map and various heightmap data - but this data is GPU resident so I can't do this on the CPU. At the moment I'm instancing using the geometry shader - this will change to traditional instancing if performance is bad, and I'd then compute the model matrices for each tree on a compute shader.
I've got as far as trying to use a modified version of lookAt() but I can't get it working and even if I did, the trees would be perpendicular to the planet instead of standing up. I know I can define a using 3 axis, so the normal of the sphere, a tangent and a bitangent, but given I don't care what direction these tangents and bitangents are in at the moment, what would be a quick way to calculate this matrix in GLSL? Thanks!
void drawInstance(vec3 offset)
{
//Grab the model's position from the model matrix
vec3 modelPos = vec3(modelMatrix[3][0],modelMatrix[3][1],modelMatrix[3][2]);
//Add the offset
modelPos +=offset;
//Eye = where the new pos is, look in x direction for now, planet is at origin so up is just the modelPos normalized
mat4 m = lookAt(modelPos, modelPos + vec3(1,0,0), normalize(modelPos));
//Lookat is intended as a camera matrix, fix this
m = inverse(m);
vec3 pos = gl_in[0].gl_Position.xyz;
gl_Position = vp * m *vec4(pos, 1.0);
EmitVertex();
pos = gl_in[1].gl_Position.xyz ;
gl_Position = vp * m *vec4(pos, 1.0);
EmitVertex();
pos = gl_in[2].gl_Position.xyz;
gl_Position = vp * m * vec4(pos, 1.0);
EmitVertex();
EndPrimitive();
}
void main()
{
vp = proj * view;
mvp = proj * view * modelMatrix;
drawInstance(vec3(0,20,0));
// drawInstance(vec3(0,20,0));
// drawInstance(vec3(0,20,-40));
// drawInstance(vec3(40,40,0));
// drawInstance(vec3(-40,0,0));
}
I would recommend taking a different approach completely.
First, don't use geometry shaders for replicating geometry. That's what the glDrawArraysInstanced is for.
Second, it's hard to define such a matrix procedurally. This is related to the Hairy Ball Theorem.
Instead I would generate a bunch of random rotations on the CPU. Use this method to create a uniformly distributed quaternion. Pass that quaternion to the vertex shader as a single vec4 instanced attribute. In the vertex shader:
Offset the tree vertex by (0, 0, radiusOfThePlanet) so that it's located at the north pole (assuming Z-axis is up).
Apply the quaternion rotation (it will rotate around planet center so the tree stays on the surface).
Apply the planet model-view and camera projection matrices as usual.
This will yield an unbiased uniformly distributed random set of trees.
Found a solution to the problem which allows me to place objects on the surface of a sphere facing in the correct directions. Here is the code:
mat4 m = mat4(1);
vec3 worldPos = getWorldPoint(sphericalCoords);
//Add a random number to the world pos, then normalize it so that it is a point on a unit sphere slightly different to the world pos. The vector between them is a tangent. Change this value to rotate the object once placed on the sphere
vec3 xAxis = normalize(normalize(worldPos + vec3(0.0,0.2,0.0)) - normalize(worldPos));
//Planet is at 0,0,0 so world pos can be used as the normal, and therefore the y axis
vec3 yAxis = normalize(worldPos);
//We can cross the y and x axis to generate a bitangent to use as the z axis
vec3 zAxis = normalize(cross(yAxis, xAxis));
//This is our rotation matrix!
mat3 baseMat = mat3(xAxis, yAxis, zAxis);
//Fill this into our 4x4 matrix
m = mat4(baseMat);
//Transform m by the Radius in the y axis to put it on the surface
mat4 m2 = transformMatrix(mat4(1), vec3(0,radius,0));
m = m * m2;
//Multiply by the MVP to project correctly
m = mvp* m;
//Draw an instance of your object
drawInstance(m);

When does interpolation happen between the vertex and fragment shaders in this WebGL program?

Background
I'm looking at this example code from the WebGL2 library PicoGL.js.
It describes a single triangle (three vertices: (-0.5, -0.5), (0.5, -0.5), (0.0, 0.5)), each of which is assigned a color (red, green, blue) by the vertex shader:
#version 300 es
layout(location=0) in vec4 position;
layout(location=1) in vec3 color;
out vec3 vColor;
void main() {
vColor = color;
gl_Position = position;
}
The vColor output is passed to the fragment shader:
#version 300 es
precision highp float;
in vec3 vColor;
out vec4 fragColor;
void main() {
fragColor = vec4(vColor, 1.0);
}
and together they render the following image:
Question(s)
My understanding is that the vertex shader is called once per vertex, whereas the fragment shader is called once per pixel.
However, the fragment shader references the vColor variable, which is only assigned once per call to each vertex, but there are many more pixels than vertices!
The resulting image clearly shows a color gradient - why?
Does WebGL automatically interpolate values of vColor for pixels in between vertices? If so, how is the interpolation done?
Yes, WebGL automatically interpolates between the values supplied to the 3 vertices.
Copied from this site
A linear interpolation from one value to another would be this
formula
result = (1 - t) * a + t * b
Where t is a value from 0 to 1 representing some position between a and b. 0 at a and 1 at b.
For varyings though WebGL uses this formula
result = (1 - t) * a / aW + t * b / bW
-----------------------------
(1 - t) / aW + t / bW
Where aW is the W that was set on gl_Position.w when the varying was
as set to a and bW is the W that was set on gl_Position.w when the
varying was set to b.
The site linked above shows how that formula generates perspective correct texture mapping coordinates when interpolating varyings
It also shows an animation of the varyings changing
The khronos OpenGL wiki - Fragment Shader has the answer. Namely:
Each fragment has a Window Space position, a few other values, and it contains all of the interpolated per-vertex output values from the last Vertex Processing stage.
(Emphasis mine)

Applying a perspective transformation matrix from GIMP into a GLSL shader

So I'm trying to add a rotation and a perspective effect to an image into the vertex shader. The rotation works just fine but I'm unable to make the perspective effect. I'm working in 2D.
The rotation matrix is generated from the code but the perspective matrix is a bunch of hardcoded values I got from GIMP by using the perspective tool.
private final Matrix3 perspectiveTransform = new Matrix3(new float[] {
0.58302f, -0.29001f, 103.0f,
-0.00753f, 0.01827f, 203.0f,
-0.00002f, -0.00115f, 1.0f
});
This perspective matrix was doing the result I want in GIMP using a 500x500 image. I'm then trying to apply this same matrix on texture coordinates. That's why I'm multiplying by 500 before and dividing by 500 after.
attribute vec4 a_position;
attribute vec4 a_color;
attribute vec2 a_texCoord0;
uniform mat4 u_projTrans;
uniform mat3 u_rotation;
uniform mat3 u_perspective;
varying vec4 v_color;
varying vec2 v_texCoords;
void main() {
v_color = a_color;
vec3 vec = vec3(a_texCoord0 * 500.0, 1.0);
vec = vec * u_perspective;
vec = vec3((vec.xy / vec.z) / 500.0, 0.0);
vec -= vec3(0.5, 0.5, 0.0);
vec = vec * u_rotation;
v_texCoords = vec.xy + vec2(0.5);
gl_Position = u_projTrans * a_position;
}
For the rotation, I'm offsetting the origin so that it rotates around the center instead of the top left corner.
Pretty much everything I know about GIMP's perspective tool comes from http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/graphics/manual/pdf/ch10.ps This was suggesting I would be able to reproduce what GIMP does after reading it, but it turns out I can't. The result shows nothing (no pixel) while removing the perspective part shows the image rotating properly.
As mentioned in the link, I'm dividing by vec.z to convert my homogeneous coordinates back to a 2D point. I'm not using the origin shifting for the perspective transformation as it was mentioned in the link that the top left corner was used as an origin. p.11:
There is one thing to be careful about - the origin of GIMP
coordinates is at the upper left, with y increasing downwards.
EDIT:
Thanks to #Rabbid76's answer, it's now showing something! However, it's not transforming my texture like the matrix was transforming my image on GIMP.
My transformation matrix on GIMP was supposed to do something a bit like that:
But instead, it looks like something like that:
This is what I think from what I can see from the actual result:
https://imgur.com/X56rp8K (Image used)
(As pointed out, it texture parameter is clamp to edge instead of clamp to border, but that's beside the point)
It looks like it's doing the exact opposite of what I'm looking for. I tried offsetting the origin to the center of the image and to the bottom left before applying the matrix without success. This is a new result but it's still the same problem: How to apply the GIMP perspective matric into a GLSL shader?
EDIT2:
With more testing, I can confirm that it's doing the "opposite". Using this simple downscale transformation matrix:
private final Matrix3 perspectiveTransform = new Matrix3(new float[] {
0.75f, 0f, 50f,
0f, 0.75f, 50f,
0f, 0f, 1.0f
});
The result is an upscaled version of the image:
If I invert the matrix programmatically, it works for the simple scaling matrix! But for the perspective matrix, it shows that:
https://imgur.com/v3TLe2d
EDIT3:
Thanks to #Rabbid76 again it turned out applying the rotation after the perspective matrix does the rotation before and I end up with a result like this: https://imgur.com/n1vWq0M
It is almost it! The only problem is that the image is VERY squished. It's just like the perspective matrix was applied multiple times. But if you look carefully, you can see it rotating while in perspective just like I want it. The problem now is how to unsquish it to get a result just like I had in GIMP. (The root problem is still the same, how to take a GIMP matrix and apply it in a shader)
This perspective matrix was doing the result I want in GIMP using a 500x500 image. I'm then trying to apply this same matrix on texture coordinates. That's why I'm multiplying by 500 before and dividing by 500 after.
The matrix
0.58302 -0.29001 103.0
-0.00753 0.01827 203.0
-0.00002 -0.00115 1.0f
is a 2D perspective transformation matrix. It operates with 2D Homogeneous coordinate.
See 2D affine and perspective transformation matrices
Since the matrix which is displayed in GIMP is the transformation from the perspective to the orthogonal view, the inverse matrix has to be used for the transformation.
The inverse matrix can be calculated by calling inv().
The matrix is setup to performs a operation of a Cartesian coordinate in the range [0, 500], to a Homogeneous coordinates in the range [0, 500].
Your assumption is correct, you have to scale the input from the range [0, 1] to [0, 500] and the output from [0, 500] to [0, 1].
But you have to scale the 2D Cartesian coordinates
Further you have to do the rotation after the perspective projection and the Perspective divide.
It may be necessary (dependent on the bitmap and the texture coordinate attributes), that you have to flip the V coordinate of the texture coordinates.
And most important, the transformation has to be done per fragment in the fragment shader.
Note, since this transformation is not linear (it is perspective transformation), it is not sufficient to to calculate the texture coordinates on the corner points.
vec2 Project2D( in vec2 uv_coord )
{
vec2 v_texCoords;
const float scale = 500.0;
// flip Y
//vec2 uv = vec2(uv_coord.x, 1.0 - uv_coord.y);
vec2 uv = uv_coord.xy;
// uv_h: 3D homougenus in range [0, 500]
vec3 uv_h = vec3(uv * scale, 1.0) * u_perspective;
// uv_h: perspective devide and downscale [0, 500] -> [0, 1]
vec3 uv_p = vec3(uv_h.xy / uv_h.z / scale, 1.0);
// rotate
uv_p = vec3(uv_p.xy - vec2(0.5), 0.0) * u_rotation + vec3(0.5, 0.5, 0.0);
return uv_p.xy;
}
Of course you can do the transformation in the vertex shader too.
But then you have to pass the 2d homogeneous coordinate to from the vertex shader to the fragment shader
This is similar to set a clip space coordinates to gl_Position.
The difference is that you have a 2d homogeneous coordinate and not a 3d. and you have to do the Perspective divide manually in the fragment shader:
Vertex shader:
attribute vec2 a_texCoord0;
varying vec3 v_texCoords_h;
uniform mat3 u_perspective
vec3 Project2D( in vec2 uv_coord )
{
vec2 v_texCoords;
const float scale = 500.0;
// flip Y
//vec2 uv = vec2(uv_coord.x, 1.0 - uv_coord.y);
vec2 uv = uv_coord.xy;
// uv_h: 3D homougenus in range [0, 500]
vec3 uv_h = vec3(uv * scale, 1.0) * u_perspective;
// downscale
return vec3(uv_h.xy / scale, uv_h.z);
}
void main()
{
v_texCoords_h = Project2D( a_texCoord0 );
.....
}
Fragment shader:
varying vec3 v_texCoords_h;
uniform mat3 u_rotation;
void main()
{
// perspective divide
vec2 uv = vertTex.xy / vertTex.z;
// rotation
uv = (vec3(uv.xy - vec2(0.5), 0.0) * u_rotation + vec3(0.5, 0.5, 0.0)).xy;
.....
}
See the preview, where I used the following 2D projection matrix, which is the inverse matrix from that one which is displayed in GIMP:
2.452f, 2.6675f, -388.0f,
0.0f, 7.7721f, -138.0f,
0.00001f, 0.00968f, 1.0f
Further note, in compare to u_projTrans, u_perspective is initialized in row major order.
Because of that you have to multiply the vector from the left to u_perspective:
vec_h = vec3(vec.xy * 500.0, 1.0) * u_perspective;
But you have to multiply the vector from the right to u_projTrans:
gl_Position = u_projTrans * a_position;
See GLSL Programming/Vector and Matrix Operations
and Data Type (GLSL)
Of course this may change if you transpose the matrix when you set it by glUniformMatrix*

Three.js Get local position of vertex in shader, is that even what I need?

I am attempting to implement this technique of rendering grass into my three.js app.
http://davideprati.com/demo/grass/
On level terrain at y position 0, everything looks absolutely fantastic!
Problem is, my app (game) has the terrain modified by a heightmap so very few (if any) positions on that terrain are at y position 0.
It seems this vertex shader animation code assumes the grass object is sitting at y position 0 for the following vertex shader code to work as intended:
if (pos.y > 1.0) {
float noised = noise(pos.xy);
pos.y += sin(globalTime * magnitude * noised);
pos.z += sin(globalTime * magnitude * noised);
if (pos.y > 1.7){
pos.x += sin(globalTime * noised);
}
}
This condition works on the assumption that terrain is flat and at position 0, so that only vertices above the ground animate. Well.. umm.. since all vertices are above 1 with a heightmap (mostly), some strange effects occur, such as grass sliding all over the place lol.
Is there a way to do this where I can specify a y position threshold based more on the sprite than its world position? Or is there a better way all together to deal with this "slidy" problem?
I am an extreme noobie when it comes to shader code =]
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I have no idea what I'm doing.
Edit* Ok, I think the issue is that I am altering the y position of each mesh merged into the main grass container geometry based on the y position of the terrain it sits on. I guess the shader is looking at the local position, but since the geometry itself vertically displaced, the shader doesn’t know how to compensate. Hmm…
Ok, I made a fiddle that demonstrates the issue:
https://jsfiddle.net/titansoftime/a3xr8yp7/
Change the value on line# 128 to a 1 instead of 2 and everything looks fine. Not sure how to go about fixing this.
Also, I have no idea why the colors are doing that, they look fine in my app.
If I understood the question correctly:
You are right in asking for "local" position. Lets say the single strand of grass is a narrow strip, with some height segments.
If you want this to be modular, easy to scale and such, this would most likely extend in some direction in the 0-1 range. Lets say it has four segments along that direction, which would yield vertices with with coordinates [0.0, 0.333, 0.666, 1.0]. It makes slightly more sense than an arbitrary range, because it's easy to reason that 0 is ground, 1 is the tip of the blade.
This is the "local" or model space. When you multiply this with the modelMatrix you transform it to world space (call it localToWorld).
In the shader it could look something like this
void main(){
vec4 localPosition = vec4( position, 1.);
vec4 worldPosition = modelMatrix * localPosition;
vec4 viewPosition = viewMatrix * worldPosition;
vec4 projectedPosition = projectionMatrix * viewPosition; //either orthographic or perspective
gl_Position = projectedPosition;
}
This is the classic "you have a scene graph node" which you transform. Depending on what you set for your mesh position, rotation and scale vec4 worldPosition will be different, but the local position is always the same. You can't tell from that value alone if something is the bottom or top, any value is viable since your terrain can be anything.
With this approach, you can write a shader and logic saying that if a vertex is at height of 0 (or less than some epsilon) don't animate.
So this brings us to some logic, that works in some assumed space (you have a rule for 1.0, and 1.7).
Because you are translating the geometries, and merging them, you no longer have this user friendly space that is the model space. Now these blades may very well skip local2world transformation (it may very well end up being just an identity matrix).
This messes up your logic for selecting the vertices obviously.
If you have to take the approach of distributing them as such, then you need another channel to carry the meaning of that local space, even if you only use it for that animation.
Two suitable channels already exist - UV, and vertex color. Uv's you can imagine as having another flat mesh, in another space, that maps to the mesh you are rendering. But in this particular case it seems like you can use a custom attribute aBladeHeight that can be a float for example.
void main(){
vec4 worldPosition = vec4(position, 1.); //you "burnt/baked" this transformation in, so no need to go from local to world in the shader
vec2 localPosition = uv; //grass in 2d, not transformed to your terrain
//this check knows whats on the bottom of the grass
//rather than whats on the ground (has no idea where the ground is)
if(localPosition.y){
//since local does not exist, the only space we work in is world
//we apply the transformation in that space, but the filter
//is the check above, in uv space, where we know whats the bottom, whats the top
worldPosition.xy += myLogic();
}
gl_Position = projectionMatrix * viewMatrix * worldPosition;
}
To mimic the "local space"
void main(){
vec4 localSpace = vec4(uv,0.,1.);
gl_Position = projectionMatrix * modelViewMatrix * localSpace;
}
And all the blades would render overlapping each other.
EDIT
With instancing the shader would look something like this:
attribute vec4 aInstanceMatrix0; //16 floats to encode a matrix4
attribute vec4 aInstanceMatrix1;
attribute vec4 aInstanceMatrix2;
//attribute vec4 aInstanceMatrix3; //but one you know will be 0,0,0,1 so you can pack in the first 3
void main(){
vec4 localPos = vec4(position, 1.); //the local position is intact, its the normalized 0-1 blade
//do your thing in local space
if(localPos.y > foo){
localPos.xz += myLogic();
}
//notice the difference, instead of using the modelMatrix, you use the instance attributes in it's place
mat4 localToWorld = mat4(
aInstanceMatrix0,
aInstanceMatrix1,
aInstanceMatrix2,
//aInstanceMatrix3
0. , 0. , 0. , 1. //this is actually wrong i think, it should be the last column not row, but for illustrative purposes,
);
//to pack it more effeciently the rows would look like this
// xyz w
// xyz w
// xyz w
// 000 1
// off the top of my head i dont know what the correct code is
mat4 foo = mat4(
aInstanceMatrix0.xyz, 0.,
aInstanceMatrix1.xyz, 0.,
aInstanceMatrix2.xyz, 0.,
aInstanceMatrix0.w, aInstanceMatrix1.w, aInstanceMatrix2.w, 1.
)
//you can still use the modelMatrix with this if you want to move the ENTIRE hill with all the grass with .position.set()
vec4 worldPos = localToWorld * localPos;
gl_Position = projectionMatrix * viewMatrix * worldPos;
}

Retrieve Vertices Data in THREE.js

I'm creating a mesh with a custom shader. Within the vertex shader I'm modifying the original position of the geometry vertices. Then I need to access to this new vertices position from outside the shader, how can I accomplish this?
In lieu of transform feedback (which WebGL 1.0 does not support), you will have to use a passthrough fragment shader and floating-point texture (this requires loading the extension OES_texture_float). That is the only approach to generate a vertex buffer on the GPU in WebGL. WebGL does not support pixel buffer objects either, so reading the output data back is going to be very inefficient.
Nevertheless, here is how you can accomplish this:
This will be a rough overview focusing on OpenGL rather than anything Three.js specific.
First, encode your vertex array this way (add a 4th component for index):
Vec4 pos_idx : xyz = Vertex Position, w = Vertex Index (0.0 through NumVerts-1.0)
Storing the vertex index as the w component is necessary because OpenGL ES 2.0 (WebGL 1.0) does not support gl_VertexID.
Next, you need a 2D floating-point texture:
MaxTexSize = Query GL_MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE
Width = MaxTexSize;
Height = min (NumVerts / MaxTexSize, 1);
Create an RGBA floating-point texture with those dimensions and use it as FBO color attachment 0.
Vertex Shader:
#version 100
attribute vec4 pos_idx;
uniform int width; // Width of floating-point texture
uniform int height; // Height of floating-point texture
varying vec4 vtx_out;
void main (void)
{
float idx = pos_idx.w;
// Position this vertex so that it occupies a unique pixel
vec2 xy_idx = vec2 (float ((int (idx) % width)) / float (width),
floor (idx / float (width)) / float (height)) * vec2 (2.0) - vec2 (1.0);
gl_Position = vec4 (xy_idx, 0.0f, 1.0f);
//
// Do all of your per-vertex calculations here, and output to vtx_out.xyz
//
// Store the index in the W component
vtx_out.w = idx;
}
Passthrough Fragment Shader:
#version 100
varying vec4 vtx_out;
void main (void)
{
gl_FragData [0] = vtx_out;
}
Draw and Read Back:
// Draw your entire vertex array for processing (as `GL_POINTS`)
glDrawArrays (GL_POINTS, 0, NumVerts);
// Bind the FBO's color attachment 0 to `GL_TEXTURE_2D`
// Read the texture back and store its results in an array `verts`
glGetTexImage (GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGBA, GL_FLOAT, verts);

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