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 skeletal animation using matrix palette skinning


When working with games and simulation systems, virtual characters are often used to give a detailed depiction of scenarios. Such characters are typically represented using a combination of bones and skin. The vertices of the 3D model are assigned influence weights (called blend weights) that control how much a bone influences that vertex. Up to four bones can influence a vertex. The process whereby bone weights are assigned to the vertices of a 3D model is called skinning. Each bone stores its transformation. These stored sequences of transformations are applied to every frame and every bone in the model and in the end, we get an animated character on the screen. This representation of animation is called skeletal animation. There are several methods for skeletal animation. One popular method is matrix palette skinning, which is also known as linear blend skinning (LBS). This method will be implemented in this recipe.

Getting...