I was working with a default picker for creating light objects. You would type something like:

LIGHT light0(AMBIENT);

and it would create an ambient light based off of preset values, and handle the rest of the code elsewhere.

The problem is when I was changing up the input variables for the lightfv( GL_AMBIENCE, float* ambience)

I ran into a problem.

The scene lighting would only work if the viewing position was somewhere near the origin. It didn't make sence. I messed with attenuation, trying to lower it, raise, it, remove it completely, and it didnt seem to have an effect on this issue.

Light just stops working once the camera moves more than just a few units from the origin.

Now if you know of this to be some sort of aspect of OpenGL and I'm just missing a line of code somewhere, let me know. if we're not so lucky keep reading for a few samples of the code and a the details of when this started happening.

Now the code for the light is something liek this

class LIGHT

{

vector3 pos;

color ambience;

color diffuse;

color specular

float shine;

float attenuation;

LIGHT(LIGHT_PRESET);

void Enable()

void Update()

};

I'm using a color code like this:

struct color

{

float r, g, b, a;

void Set(float, float, float);

float* pFloat(); // this returns an array of 4 numbers like the ones the light needs as input

};

float* color::pFloat()

{

float floater[] = {r, g, b, a};

return floater;

};

the vector code for light positioning works similarly

struct vector3

{

float x, y, z;

void Set(float, float, float);

float* pFloat();

};

float* color:pFloat()

{

float floater[] = {x, y, z};

return floater;

};

And the light takes those values as such

glLightfv(ID, GL_POSITION, position.pFloat());
glLightfv(ID, GL_DIFFUSE, diffuse.pFloat());
glLightfv(ID, GL_AMBIENT, ambient.pFloat());

The picker works, there was no problem there, but when I tried to change from setting the color values from this:

color[0] = .5;

color[1] = .2;

color[2] = .7;

position[0] = 10;

position[1] = 15;

position[0] = 10;

to something better like this

color.Set(.5, .2, .7);

position.Set(10, 15, 10);

The structs for color and position have functions to easily set themselves, and also produce the float* number array that openGl likes to use for it's light and position color values.

I got this working, and I've used this concept many times, but I ran into this other lighting problem that I just don't understand.

At first it seemed like it wasn't getting the correct positional values and just placing the lights at some far distance place,

then i noticed that it was placing them directly at the center, inside the test object I'm using to work with the lighting.

I output the values that would be directly sent into the openGl position input, and found them to be fine.

Does anyone have any idea why this is happening?

To help I uploaded a video of this effect.

and also produce the float* number array that openGl likes to use for it's light and position color values.

float* vector3::pFloat() {
    return reinterpret_cast<float *>(this);
}

I changed the update light code to this:

float amb[] = {5, 5, 5};
glLightfv(light->ID, GL_POSITION, amb );

and excluded this:
//glLightfv(light->ID, GL_POSITION, light->position.pFloat());

and it works. The problem is that I need to pull the info from the *light that the update function uses as input

is there something wrong with using:

UpdateLight( LIGHT *light)

and the pulling the info using:

light->position.pFloat(); // pFloat() returns a pointer to an array of { x, y, z} stored in the vector3

Could be that since it uses a pointer to the light struct, and then a pointer to the vector3 struct that somehow the actual data struct gets lost.

I'm still confused as to why the light only works near the origin with this implementation.

Any thoughts?

Ahah you saved my life. I'm still a little confused about the matrix multiplying the light positions.

Right now, the UpdateAllLights() happens after the modelview matrix has been established.

Where would you reccomend that this be placed?

is there something wrong with using:

UpdateLight( LIGHT *light)

and the pulling the info using:

light->position.pFloat(); // pFloat() returns a pointer to an array of { x, y, z} stored in the vector3

Where would you reccomend that this be placed?

I had started typing that before you had replied. Thanks again for the help. The reinterpret cast thing is new to me. I've been doing all of that manually, and it's been a real pain. Most of the C++ books I have are >10 years old, and they don't go into alot of detail about stuff like that. Mostly strings and array pointers. I'll do a little research into the methods of overloading operators and such. Thanks again for the help.

Got another question. i've got 3 lights, with ambient and diffuse values set around .8 -> .9 and the scene is very dark looking. There's light, but it's not really like the lighting I'm used to. I tried to bump the ambient values up to 10 and it didn't seem to have an effect. Any ideas?