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

Introduction


Offscreen rendering functionality is a powerful feature of modern graphics API. In modern OpenGL, this is implemented by using the Framebuffer objects (FBOs). Some of the applications of the offscreen rendering include post processing effects such as glows, dynamic cubemaps, mirror effect, deferred rendering techniques, image processing techniques, and so on. Nowadays almost all games use this feature to carry out stunning visual effects with high rendering quality and detail. With the FBOs, the offscreen rendering is greatly simplified, as the programmer uses FBO the way he would use any other OpenGL object. This chapter will focus on using FBO to carry out image processing effects for implementing digital convolution and glow. In addition, we will also elaborate on how to use the FBO for mirror effect and dynamic cube mapping.