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

Rendering a skybox using static cube mapping


This recipe will show how to render a skybox object using static cube mapping. Cube mapping is a simple technique for generating a surrounding environment. There are several methods, such as sky dome, which uses a spherical geometry; skybox, which uses a cubical geometry; and skyplane, which uses a planar geometry. For this recipe, we will focus on skyboxes using the static cube mapping approach. The cube mapping process needs six images that are placed on each face of a cube. The skybox is a very large cube that moves with the camera but does not rotate with it.

Getting ready

The code for this recipe is contained in the Chapter3/Skybox directory.

How to do it…

Let us get started with the recipe as follows:

  1. Set up the vertex array and vertex buffer objects to store a unit cube geometry.

  2. Load the skybox images using an image loading library, such as SOIL.

    int texture_widths[6];
    int texture_heights[6];
    int channels[6];
    GLubyte* pData[6];
    cout<<"Loading...