Book Image

OpenGL Development Cookbook

By : Muhammad Mobeen Movania
Book Image

OpenGL Development Cookbook

By: Muhammad Mobeen Movania

Overview of this book

OpenGL is the leading cross-language, multi-platform API used by masses of modern games and applications in a vast array of different sectors. Developing graphics with OpenGL lets you harness the increasing power of GPUs and really take your visuals to the next level. OpenGL Development Cookbook is your guide to graphical programming techniques to implement 3D mesh formats and skeletal animation to learn and understand OpenGL. OpenGL Development Cookbook introduces you to the modern OpenGL. Beginning with vertex-based deformations, common mesh formats, and skeletal animation with GPU skinning, and going on to demonstrate different shader stages in the graphics pipeline. OpenGL Development Cookbook focuses on providing you with practical examples on complex topics, such as variance shadow mapping, GPU-based paths, and ray tracing. By the end you will be familiar with the latest advanced GPU-based volume rendering techniques.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
OpenGL Development Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Implementing order-independent transparency using front-to-back peeling


When we have to render translucent geometry, for example, a glass window in a graphics application, care has to be taken to make sure that the geometry is properly rendered in the depth order such that the opaque objects in the scene are rendered first and the transparent objects are rendered last. This unfortunately incurs additional overhead where the CPU is busy sorting objects. In addition, the blending result will be correct only from a specific viewing direction, as shown in the following figure. Note that the image on the left is the result if we view from the direction of the Z axis. There is no blending at all in the left image. If the same scene is viewed from the opposite side, we can see the correct alpha blending result.

Depth peeling (also called front-to-back peeling) is one technique that helps in this process. In this technique, the scene is rendered in slices in such a way that slices are rendered one...