Lab 2: Points, Primitives and 2D Art


Highlights of this lab:

This lab is an introduction to Fundamental OpenGL Functions

Assignment:

After the lab lecture, you have one week to:


Seminar Notes

Before you begin this seminar, create a new template project like you did in the first lab - like the first one before you added triangle code. You will complete the project by following the instructions in this lab's notes instead.

A. Lab 1 Follow-up

OpenGL is an operating system and hardware platform independent graphics library designed to be easily portable yet rapidly executable. Unlike Direct3D, which is only available on PC, Xbox and Windows Mobile OS, OpenGL is available on a wide variety of hardware platforms and operating systems including Unix/X11 (Linux, BSD), Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows 98 to Windows 10.

On the desktop, OpenGL stayed relevant through a robust extension mechanism and with major releases throughout the 2000s. In February 2016, OpenGL received a massive update called Vulkan , which has features comparable to Direct3D 12. The first games for Vulkan appeared soon after. A few notable recent games with Vulkan support include Doom Eternal, Half Life: Alyx, Crisis Remastered (1, 2, and 3) and the 2024 Game of the Year: Baldur's Gate 3. Vulkan will run on hardware that can support OpenGL ES 3.1 or OpenGL 4, including Switch, Android since v9.0 and all recent Windows desktop. Apple does not support Vulkan directly, preferring their own Metal API, but Khronos provides a compatibility layer called MoltenVK.

An embedded version, OpenGL ES, is available on many hand held devices including iPhone OS and Android OS devices. Javascript versions of OpenGL ES 2.0 and 3.0 are an official part of the HTML 5 specification and are available as WebGL 1.0 (Feb. 2011) and WebGL 2.0 (Apr. 2017). As of January 2021, WebGL2 support is available on nearly 92.8% of the browser market, and WebGL 1 is at 95.2%.

The basic steps to use OpenGL in a program are:

What are DCs and RCs?

What is a pixel format?

B. WebGL Rendering Functions

The Rendering Context Object

All the functions in the WebGL API are accessed through the Rendering Context object. That is why all the WebGL2 Javascript programs you have seen so far have a global variable called gl at the top:
    

    let gl; //Generic variable, intended to hold WebGL2 RC object
  
The Rendering Context object is acquired with the getContext() function built into HTML5 canvases. This function may also provide access to other types of renderers.
    
  //find canvas by id name
  let canvas = document.getElementById( /* your canvas element's id goes here */ );

  //get webgl RC and do some minimal error checking
  gl = canvas.getContext('webgl2', // all defaults attributes in spec.
      {
          'alpha': true,
          'depth': true,
          'stencil': false,
          'antialias': true,
          'premultipliedAlpha': false,
          'powerPreference': "default",
          'failIfMajorPerformanceCaveat': true,
          'desynchronized': false
      }
  );

  if (!gl) 
  {
    //This is friendlier than an alert dialog like we use in the template
    canvas.parentNode.replaceChild(
        document.createTextNode("Cannot get WebGL2 Rendering Context"),
        canvas
      );
    return;
  }

Once you have a rendering context, all your interactions with WebGL will be through the object. This means that if your rendering context object is called gl all WebGL2 calls will begin gl.. Many WebGL2 constants are also defined as members of the rendering context object. For example, in this lab you will see:

                   Functions                       Related Constants
                   ===============                 ======================
Data Management    gl.createBuffer()               
                   gl.bindBuffer()                 
                   gl.bufferData()                 gl.STATIC_DRAW
                                                   gl.DYNAMIC_DRAW
                                                   gl.STREAM_DRAW
                                                   gl.ARRAY_BUFFER

Shader Connection Management  
                   gl.createVertexArray()          
                   gl.bindVertexArray()          
                   gl.getAttribLocation()          
                   gl.enableVertexAttribArray()    
                   gl.vertexAttribPointer()        
                   gl.getUniformLocation()         
                   gl.uniform*()                   

Built-in Settings  
                   gl.clearColor()
                   gl.clearDepth()
                   gl.cullFace()                   gl.FRONT
                                                   gl.BACK
                                                   gl.FRONT_AND_BACK

                   gl.frontFace()                  gl.CW
                                                   gl.CCW

                   gl.enable()                     gl.CULL_FACE
                                                   gl.DEPTH_TEST 
                                                   gl.POINT_SMOOTH


Draw               gl.clear()                      gl.COLOR_BUFFER_BIT
                                                   gl.DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT
                                                   
                   gl.drawArrays()                 gl.LINES               
                                                   gl.LINE_LOOP
                                                   gl.LINE_STRIP
                                                   gl.TRIANGLES
                                                   gl.TRIANGLE_STRIP
                                                   gl.TRIANGLE_FAN
                                                   gl.POINTS  
                                                   
                                                   

General
                                                   gl.FLOAT
                                                   gl.UNSIGNED_BYTE
                                                   gl.TRUE
                                                   gl.FALSE

For a full list see the section on WebGL2 Context in the WebGL2 Specifications, or check the Mozilla Developer's Page on WebGLRenderingContext.

Setting Up a Shader Program

Before you can do any drawing you need to tell WebGL what to do with the things you tell it to draw. You do this with shader programs written a language called GLSL. Shader programs consist of a minimum of two parts: a vertex shader and a fragment shader.

You may also have heard of two other shader types: geometry shaders, tesselation shaders, and compute shaders. Geometry shaders were introduced in OpenGL 3.2 with GLSL 1.50, tesselation shaders were introduced in OpenGL 4.0 with GLSL 4.00 and compute shaders were introduced in OpenGL 4.3 with GLSL 4.30. These extra shader types are optional in all versions of OpenGL.

WebGL1 supported GLSL 1.0 ES, which is based on GLSL 1.20 and had only the two basic shader types. WebGL2 allows us to use OpenGL Shading Language 3.00 ES (GLSL 3.00 ES) as its shader programming language, but can still use the old WebGL version if necessary. GLSL 3.00 ES is a modified version of GLSL 3.30, so WebGL2 supports geometry shaders if you want them.

Choosing your GLSL version

A WebGL shader with no version code will default to GLSL 1.00 ES which is very different and far less powerful than GLSL 3.00 ES. To explicitly select a shader language, the very first characters must state the version. No spaces or new lines should come first. As a convenience, the textbook's initShaders() functions strip leading whitespace from shader programs so you can use tidy formatting in HTML and still compile your shader. All parts of a shader program must use the same version.

Choosing GLSL 3.00 ES: make this the first line of all shaders in the shader program
      

      #version 300 es
    
  
Vertex Shader

You will send lists of vertex information into a vertex shader. This information comes in through variables labelled with the in modifier. This information represents attributes that can change from one vertex to the next such as colour and position. In older GLSL programs, vertex shader inputs are marked attribute. This term is still used in other places.

You can also set values before you draw with a shader that will stay constant while the shader is running. This is done by setting variables labelled with the uniform modifier. You will see more about this later.

When we are done using attributes and uniforms to calculate properties for a vertex, we pass the results along to the fragment shader through outputs labelled with the out modifier. The vertex shader outputs for the vertices in the same primitive will be interpolated across the primitive - if they aren't all the same, their values will vary from fragment to fragment. In older GLSL programs, vertex shader outputs are are marked varying.

Below is our first vertex shader. Replace the vertex-shader in your template with this vertex shader code:

Basic Vertex Shader
      
        #version 300 es

in  vec2 vPosition; //receives incoming vertex positions

out vec4 color;    //passes the colour of this vertex to the fragment shader

void main() 
{
  //Add z and w coordinates to the incoming position and pass it on.
  gl_Position = vec4(vPosition, 0.0, 1.0);

  //Colour every vertex red
  color = vec4(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0); //colour channels are red, green, blue and alpha
} 

This vertex shader only has one attribute and no uniforms. The attribute represents a 2D coordinate for the vertex and has data type vec2 - a 2 component vector which has a base type of float. Vertices can be moved around in space, coloured, and lit by the vertex shader. You will explore many of these things later. For now, our vertex program will only provide a colour for the vertex. This colour is hard coded and will be the same for all vertices. You will learn how to change this colour with a uniform or an attribute later in this lab.

Our first vertex shader uses two outputs as well. You can see the declaration for a 4 component vector, vec4, for colour, and we use the built-in output gl_Position, which is also a vec4. GLSL does not perform any type coercion, which is why the shader adds two more components to vPosition when it is assigned to gl_Position.

All vertex shaders have a second built-in output, gl_PointSize which controls the size of points. Its value controls the point's width in pixels.

Fragment Shader

The fragment shader gets data that is blended from each vertex that makes up the primitive being drawn. This could be a position somewhere between each vertex, a texture lookup coordinate, or a blended colour. For now, our shader will ignore the built-in inputs and simply copy the incoming colour to the screen.

Replace the fragment shader in your template with this fragment shader code:

Basic Fragment Shader
      
        #version 300 es
precision mediump float;

in vec4 color;  //The blended fragment colour from the vertex shader.
                //Names of inputs to a fragment shader must match
                //an output from the vertex shader.

out vec4 fragColor;

void main() 
{ 
    fragColor = color;
} 

This fragment has one input for the interpolated colour. It is important that names and data types for the inputs you create in a fragment shader match the name and data type of an output you create in the vertex shader.

This shader also declares an output. There is no built in color output from fragment shaders. Instead, the fragment shader must declare at least one output. Typically there is only one output from a fragment shader, and it goes draw buffer 0 - which will usually be your canvas. If there are more outputs, they will go to other draw buffers which must be specified with location numbers. These outputs may be grayscale, declared with float or uint.

Fragment shaders have three built-in inputs:

  1. highp vec4 gl_FragCoord the fragment's position in the frame buffer (often the canvas)
  2. bool gl_FrontFacing - indicates if the front (true) or back (false) is facing the viewer
  3. mediump vec2 gl_PointCoord - used to create shaped, varicolored, or textured points. [0.0, 1.0] for each component.
and one built in output:
  1. gl_FragDepth - allows the fragment shader to override the default depth of a fragment - the z value of gl_FragCoord.
Loading, Compiling and Using the Shader Program
Compiling shaders is an involved process. You have to get the shader code as text, compile the individual pieces correctly, then link them. You are also responsible for checking for compile and link errors and reporting them. The textbook provides three different initShaders() functions that can do all this for you. I strongly suggest that you use one. If you are lucky, your lab instructor will explain how to use all three.

You should call initShaders() from within your init() function, and use the result as the active shader something like this:

    
      // Load and compile shaders, then use the resulting shader program
    let program = initShaders(gl, "vertex-shader", "fragment-shader" );
    gl.useProgram( program );
    

OpenGL Primitives

Your graphics hardware has limited ability to represent geometry. Most hardware only knows how to render triangle primitives. Everything else is built up using triangles. Older versions of OpenGL included some other shapes that might have been supported by some specialized hardware, such as convex polygons and quadrilaterals, but that support has been removed from most newer versions. Below is a diagram showing the different primitive types or modes:

Here's a cool interactive Primitives Demo

Drawing with one of these types is controlled by a drawArrays() or drawElements() function. The drawArrays() function tells your rendering context to begin drawing a certain number of elements from a list of vertex data that has already been loaded into an array buffer object and connected to appropriate shader inputs. The drawElements() is similar, but requires an additional element index buffer that allows you to access the data in the vertex arrays out of order - this is the last you'll hear of drawElements() in the labs. Regardless of which you use, to be able to draw you will need to know how to load vertex data into a buffer, and how to attach it to a shader attribute.

Vertices

Defining Vertex Data

Basic WebGL rendering primitives are made up of lists of vertices. Vertex data can be two, three of four dimensional. An extra dimension is sometimes necessary to properly move vertices around in space. Vertex data is most often represented with the vec2, vec3, and vec4 data types in the shader. These are 2, 3 and 4 component floating point structures. This data should be uploaded from javascript arrays of 32-bit floating point type. For example, the following two dimensional array gives the 2D coordinates for the three vertices in a triangle:

    
      //Triangle positions
let points = new Float32Array
([
	 0.9,  0.9,
	 0.9,  0.0,
	 0.0,  0.9
]);

The number of coordinates provided per vertex should match the vec type specified on the position input of the shader you are using. If it doesn't, it may be padded to fit.

The textbook's MVnew.js file defines Javascript classes for the vec2, vec3 and vec4 data types. The following code is identical to to the array above, but uses the vec2 class:

    
      //Triangle positions
let points =
[
	vec2( 0.9,  0.9),
	vec2( 0.9,  0.0),
	vec2( 0.0,  0.9)
];

You can use either form, but I prefer to use arrays of vec* classes because they are compatible with the math functions provided by Dr. Angel, and provide an easy way to add and remove points with .push() and .pop() functions. This would allow you to easily write functions to create arbitrarily large arrays, like this one for making circles with radius of 1:

       
    function circle(sides)
{
   let vertices = []; // create empty array
   if (sides < 3)
   {
      console.log("function circle: Not enough sides to make a polygon.");
   }
   else
   {
      if (sides > 10000)
      {
         sides = 10000;
         console.log("function circle: Sides limited to 10,000.");
      }
      for (let i = sides; i >= 0; i--)
      {
         vertices.push(vec2(Math.cos(i/sides*2*Math.PI), Math.sin(i/sides*2*Math.PI)));
      }
   }
   return vertices;
}

They are also easily concatenated with the concat() method, which comes in handy for packing multiple drawable objects into one buffer.

Pros Cons
Float32Array Exact type required for most common WebGL buffers One dimensional
Hard to manipulate
Arrays of vec2, vec3, vec4 Elements have math support in MVnew.js
Easy to extend and concatenate
Must be flattened before sending to a buffer.
Flattening translates into a Float32Array and takes
a lot of time if you update buffer data frequently
Loading Vertex Data into Buffers

Once you have some vertex data, you need to load it into buffers. Each array can be loaded into a separate buffer, or all the arrays can be packed into the same buffer. You will find examples of both in various code samples in your textbook. For now, we will use two separate buffers: one for vertex positions and one for vertex colours.

To create a buffer, you use the createBuffer() (similar to the OpenGL ES glGenBuffers() command). createBuffer() creates a valid buffer name which you must bind to load with buffer data or attach to a shader attribute.

createBuffer()

WebGLBuffer createBuffer()

Returns a buffer management object/name. One buffer may be bound to load or configure at a time.

Once you have a buffer name, you bind it with bindBuffer(). A buffer is not allocated until you bind it the first time.

bindBuffer()

void bindBuffer(GLenum target,  WebGLBuffer buffer);

Where:

You will use the target type ARRAY_BUFFER for storing all vertex data in these labs.

With the buffer bound, you are ready to load data into it with bufferData(). This function comes in four forms. The first three also exist in WebGL1: form 1 specifies a buffer size and initializes with 0s, forms 2 and 3 initialize from a data source – like a flat array. Form 4 is new to WebGL2 and permits initializing from only a portion of a data source.

bufferData()

Form 1:

void bufferData(GLenum target, GLsizeiptr size, GLenum usage);

Form 2:

void bufferData(GLenum target, AllowSharedBufferSource? dataSrc, GLenum usage);

Where:

Here is how we would load our sample triangle position data. Since we will only load the data once, place this code in init after the shader loading code:
Place this code in init after the shader loading code. Make sure you have also added one of the two points definitions from earlier, or set points equal to the result of a circle function call:
      
      
      //*** Position buffer **********************
    // Create a buffer for vertex positions, make it active, and copy data to it
    let positionBuffer = gl.createBuffer();
    gl.bindBuffer( gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, positionBuffer );
    
    // Use this form for Float32Array data 
    //gl.bufferData( gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, points, gl.STATIC_DRAW ); 
    
    // Use this form for arrays of arrays or of vecs  
    gl.bufferData( gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, flatten(points), gl.STATIC_DRAW ); 
    
Managing Buffer Attachments

As you will soon see, attaching buffers to a shader is complicated and expensive. WebGL 1.0 had no easy way to manage the process, but WebGL 2.0 has vertex array objects (VAOs) that can manage these attachements. VAOs can be used to quickly switch from drawing one thing to another. You don't need VAOs for this, since a buffer can be packed with multiple items, but it can be very handy especially if you are also switching shaders.

To use VAOs, you first create them with createVertexArray(), then bind the one you wish to configure with bindVertexArray(). The process looks like this:

Configuring a Vertex Array Object:
      

    let myFirstVao; //declare globally so you can configure in init() and use in render() 

    myFirstVao = gl.createVertexArray();
    gl.bindVertexArray(myFirstVao); // start connecting buffers to a shader
                                    // also bind configured VAOs before drawing with them
  
  
Attaching Buffers to Shader Programs
Once a buffer is loaded with data, it must be attached to the correct input in your shader program. To do this, you ask for the input by name, enable it, then attach your data in the currently bound buffer to the input with a description of how the data is formatted.

To get a reference to a shader input you use getAttribLocation().

getAttribLocation()

GLint getAttribLocation(WebGLProgram program, DOMString name);

Where:

If name does not refer to a valid input in the specified shader program, the returned result will be -1. WebGL restricts shader attribute names to a maximum length and trying to request one with a longer name will also result in -1.

To enable the shader input you use enableVertexAttribArray().

enableVertexAttribArray()

void enableVertexAttribArray(GLuint index);

Where index is a valid value returned from getAttribLocation().

To attach the currently bound buffer to a shader input you use vertexAttribPointer().

vertexAttribPointer()

void vertexAttribPointer(GLuint index, GLint size,
                         GLenum type, GLboolean normalized,
                         GLsizei stride, GLintptr offset);

Where:

The purpose of the size and type arguments is to describe the data being sent to the shader. If the original data doesn't match what's asked for in the shader, it will be converted for you. In fact, all vertex attributes are converted to size 4. If y or z are missing, they become 0, and if w is missing it becomes 1. You can then define an attribute in the shader of a different size depending on your need.

Here is how we will attach the sample triangle position buffer to the "vPosition" input of the shader:

Place this code in init after the buffer creation code
      
      
      //Enable the shader's vertex position input and attach the active buffer
    let vPosition = gl.getAttribLocation( program, "vPosition" );
    gl.enableVertexAttribArray( vPosition );
    gl.vertexAttribPointer( vPosition, 2, gl.FLOAT, gl.FALSE, 0, 0 );

Finally, to draw things, use drawArrays().

drawArrays()

void drawArrays(GLenum mode, GLint first, GLsizei count);

Where:

To draw the sample triangle place this code in the draw function:

Place this code in the draw function before the glutSwapBuffers command:
      

    gl.clear( gl.COLOR_BUFFER_BIT );
    gl.drawArrays( gl.TRIANGLES, 0, 3 );

If you have done everything to this point you should see a red triangle in the upper right corner of an otherwise white rendering canvas. Now it's time to experiment with different drawing modes.

Points

Only one type of point can be drawn:

You can control the size of the points by setting the value of the vertex shader's built-in gl_PointSize output. If you do not set gl_PointSize, the point size is undefined and you may not see any points at all. Although the WebGL specification only requires points of size 1, nearly all WebGL implementations allow a much wider range because textured points form the basis of many interesting effects. Try setting various point sizes in your vertex shader.

By default, large points are square. You can change this using clever coding in a specialized fragment shader for points, like this one:

Simple Round Point Fragment Shader
            
      #version 300 es
precision mediump float;

in vec4 color;  //The blended fragment colour from the vertex shader.
                //Names of inputs to a fragment shader must match
                //an output from the vertex shader.

out vec4 fragColor;

void main() 
{ 
    fragColor = color;

    //To make simple round points, throw away fragments outside a certain radius
    vec2 pc = gl_PointCoord-vec2(0.5); // puts (0,0) at center instead of lower left
    float d = length(pc); // calculate distance from this fragment to point center
    if (d > 0.5) discard; // Antialiasing not possible this way. There is another...
} 
  

Lines

Three different line primitives can be created:

Some WebGL implementations let you control the width of lines with lineWidth(). Most Macs implement the minimum range of line widths-, 1.0 to 1.0. You may find that your PC allows more.

Triangles

Try this points array with each of the above triangle types:

    
    //Triangle
let points =
[
	vec2( 0.0, 0.0 ),
	vec2( 0.5, 0.0 ),
	vec2( 0.5, 0.5 ),
	vec2(-0.5, 0.5 ),
	vec2(-1.0, 0.0 ),
	vec2(-0.5,-0.5 )
    
];

It may be hard to see why you get the results you observe. Consider the order the points are defined and how triangles are defined for each triangle type.

Specifying Colours

So far our shader has used a hard coded colour. You can change this colour in a running program in one of two ways: uniforms and attributes. These are explained below.

All our colours will be in RGBA format - Red, Green, Blue, Alpha. Alpha is an extra term used in blending operations. You can think of it as "transparency", but it can do more than that. The alpha channel will be ignored in our programs this week.

Uniform Colours

A uniform is a shader value that has a constant value during a draw operation, but can be changed between draw operations with WebGL commands. Uniforms can be declared in vertex and fragement shader programs.

In your shader code, a uniform is declared next to input varyings or attributes like this:

uniform type uniformName;
      
    //eg: a 4 component colour uniform
     uniform vec4 uColor; //copy this to your colour output
  

You get access to a uniform in much the same way as a vertex array input, but you use getUniformLocation:

WebGLUniformLocation uniformLocation = rco.getUniformLocation(shaderProgram, "uniformName");
  
   //eg: get the colour from the example above for use in lab sample code
   let uColor; //Getting uniforms can be slow, so make this global 
   uColor = gl.getUniformLocation(program, "uColor"); //And put this in init. 
  
You change the value of a uniform with glUniform*() type functions. The * represents the format of the uniform you are changing and has two or three parts:
Here's a little mapping for you:
In Shader Matching uniform*() function
float uniform1f
int uniform1i
vec2 uniform2f or
uniform2fv
vec3 uniform3f or
uniform3fv
vec4 uniform4f or
uniform4fv
To change the 4 component uColor above you might write either of these glUniform* calls:
    
    gl.uniform4f( uColor, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0 ); //Yellow

   let yellow = vec4( 1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0 ); //Yellow
   gl.uniform4fv( uColor, flatten(yellow));
  
Vertex Colour Arrays

These work just like vertex position arrays. You will need to set up a second array input to your vertex shader, create a colour array, load it into a buffer and attach it to your shader. Here are samples of all threer.:

The following code defines an attribute input called vColor. It is similar to the code used for vPosition. You should assign the value in vColor to the color output:

Add this line to your vertex shader, near the vPosition input,
and modify your colour output value to match:
      
        in vec4 vColor; // Per vertex colour input

Add the appropriate triangle colours to init near to the points array
      //for initial triangle
let colors =
[
	vec4(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0), //Red
	vec4(0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0), //Green
	vec4(0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0), //Blue
];

//for later triangle types example
let colors =
[
	vec4(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0), //Red
	vec4(0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0), //Green
	vec4(0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0), //Blue
	vec4(1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0), //Yellow
	vec4(0.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0), //Cyan
	vec4(1.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0), //Magenta
];

Then copy the colour data to a buffer, like this:

Place this below your position buffer code in init
    //*** Colour buffer **********************
    // Create a buffer for colour positions, make it active, and copy data to it
    let colorBuffer = gl.createBuffer();
    gl.bindBuffer( gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, colorBuffer );
    gl.bufferData( gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, flatten(colors), gl.STATIC_DRAW );
   
    //Enable the shader's vertex colour input and attach the active buffer
    let vColor = gl.getAttribLocation( program, "vColor" );
    gl.enableVertexAttribArray( vColor );
    gl.vertexAttribPointer( vColor, 4, gl.FLOAT, gl.FALSE, 0, 0 );

The process is very similar to the position buffer set up. I have highlighted the differences in red.


Setting Up 2D Rendering

Clearing the rendering window

The colour buffer and depth buffer are usually cleared each time you begin drawing to the OpenGL window. The values you use to clear with rarely change, so they are often set in the initialisation step with the clearColor() and clearDepth() functions:

    
      gl.clearColor(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 ); //clear colour is black
      gl.clearDepth(1.0); //Clear to maximum distance

The actual clearing happens just before you draw. In your main draw routine, you specify which buffers to clear with the clear() function:
    
      gl.clear(gl.COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | gl.DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT);
    
  

The Camera

In this lab you will be drawing 2D objects. When you draw in 2D (or you are doing 3D CAD work) you should use a special geometry transformation that does not cause shape or size distortion. This transformation is called orthographic projection. In the first lab we wanted a 3D effect with foreshortening so we used perspective projection. The transformation made by perspective projection makes it hard to place things precisely on the screen. Shapes are distorted toward the edges and corners, and their apparent size varies with their distance from the camera. With orthographic projection you can precisely control how coordinates map to the drawing area, and objects render the same way regardless of distance.

This week, we will use only simple normalized device coordinates - our drawing space will lie between (-1,-1) in the lower left corner and (1,1) in the upper right. If you are using 3D coordinates, then -1 is the nearest possible Z coordinate, and 1 is the farthest. Things do not appear smaller with distance. Next week, when you learn to do perspective() projection and other transformations, you will also see the textbook's ortho() functions which can give you control over how coordinates are mapped to the window when you don't do perspective.

Default drawing coordinates. These are known as NDC or Normalized Device Coordinates.

If you are having difficulty drawing in NDC this week, you can map from canvas coordinates to NDC by changing the gl_PointCoord line in your vertex shader.

      
        float width = 500.0, height = 500.0; // set these to match your canvas
        vec4 temp ...; // incomplete - set this with vec4 version of vPosition
                       // exact code depents on how you setup vPosition.

        // if y axis is flipped, use this line
        //temp.y = height-temp.y;
        gl_Position = temp / vec4(width, height, 1., 1.) * 2.0 - 1.0;
      
    

This will put (0,0) in the lower left corner of the canvas.

Depth testing

In the last two sections we've discussed how to clear the depth buffer, and the default range of depth values. Perhaps you'd also like to know how to specify 3D vertices and do depth testing.

Without depth testing, objects appear on the screen in the order you draw them. If you want to draw something behind another thing you have already drawn, you need to turn on depth testing, supply depth values with your vertex coordinates, and clear the depth buffer each time you start drawing.

In more detail:
  1. Clear the depth buffer along with the colour buffer as described above.
  2. Turn on depth testing with enable() like this:
    Place this code anywhere in your init:
              
        gl.enable(gl.DEPTH_TEST);
              
            
  3. Supply a non-zero depth to the vertex shader by making sure that the vPosition attribute is a vec3 or vec4. Then make sure you adjust how it is copied to the gl_Position built-in output.
  4. Change your coordinate data arrays to base type vec3, then supply a depth, or z, value to each vertex in your data arrays. For example you could specify two overlapping triangles like this:
            
    //TRIANGLES
    let points=
    [
       vec3( 0.0, 0.0,-0.5 ),
       vec3( 0.5, 0.0,-0.5 ),
       vec3( 0.5, 0.5,-0.5 ),
       vec3( 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 ),
       vec3( 0.0,-1.0, 0.0 ),
       vec3( 1.0, 0.0, 0.0 )
    ];
    
    let colors= 
    [
       vec4( 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 ), // 3 red vertices
       vec4( 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 ), 
       vec4( 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 ),
       vec4( 0.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0 ), // 3 cyan vertices
       vec4( 0.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0 ),
       vec4( 0.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0 )
    ];
    
    
  5. Make sure you are set up to use a colour input attribute as discussed earlier.
  6. Make sure you are drawing the six points specified.
  7. Change the size component of the vertexAttribPointer() call for your position buffer to match the points array. It was 2, it should be 3 now.

If everything works, the cyan triangle in this example appears behind the red, even though it is drawn second. In the default coordinate system, larger z values are farther away. With depth testing off, the cyan triangle would be in front of the red one.



Assignment

Goals of this assignment:

Get comfortable drawing with vertex buffers, uniforms and shaders by:

For starters:

It is good to get a feeling for where you can put points on the scene.

The following instructions are meant to get you started from one of the template projects provided on the lab schedule. Your lab instructor will probably do a. through c. during the lab demo:

  1. Get the HTML and Javascript template code from lab 1 and put it in a Lab2 folder in your Lab directory structure. Name the files Lab2.html and Lab2.js
  2. Modify the shader in the project as described in the Setting Up a Shader Program section of the lab 2 notes.
  3. Add code to init() as indicated by the following comments:
        //Explicitly set clear color to black or a colour you like
        //Load, compile and use a shader
        //Load the simple triangle position data near the top of the notes into a buffer
        //Bind the buffer to your shader's vPosition input
        
  4. Confirm that you can draw the triangle with the original shader code. Use the first drawArrays() command found in the notes, and place it in the render() function as described there.
  5. Add either a uniform or an array input to your vertex shader to allow you to change colours.
  6. Add these vertices to the end of your points array:
       vec2( 0.99, 0.99),
       vec2(-0.99, 0.99),
       vec2(-0.99,-0.99),
       vec2( 0.99,-0.99),
    
  7. Add this drawArrays() command to draw the four new points:
       gl.drawArrays(gl.LINE_LOOP, 3, 4); // Start at the fourth vertex, draw four vertices
    
  8. Colour the triangle and rectangle with the colours of your choice. Add glUniform*() commands, or set up and load a colours array as appropriate to accomplish this task.
  9. You may remove the drawArrays() command that draws the triangle. Please leave the rectangle border in place.
  10. Consult the marking scheme to see what else to do.

Marking scheme and details of assignment:

(18 marks total)

Samples of previous work. Your work will end up in the gallery, so pay attention to artistic impression.

Deliverables

What I want in zipped format:
  1. Your code + any supporting files (for instance, if you put custom functions or points arrays in separate .js files)
  2. An image of your final product
  3. BONUS: Add at least one extra useful uniform to your program. You could use such uniforms to adjust the position, size or rotation of objects you draw with draw commands. Try something. I like being surprised.