OpenGL Billboard particles

Recommended Posts

Hi, I am having trouble rendering a batch of billboard particles using OpenGL. I've gone through some tutorials but I still can't get it to work. Some of the examples I've seen modify a particle's mesh everytime it is rendered. In my particle system, there is only one mesh loaded and is used by all particles. Every particle calculates its own world matrix (translation, rotation and scaling) that is then used to place the mesh in the world. How should I manipulate the camera and particle matrices to make the particle always face the viewer? I want to this to work regardless of the camera's position and orientation.

Share on other sites
This is the way I do it...

clicky

Yepp.... that involves some knowledge in vector math, but I do think you should check it out! :)

Peace!

Share on other sites
Your technique requires that I manipulate the mesh's vertices. I'd rather not mess with the vertices and manipulate the matrices to achieve the same effect. Is that not possible?

Share on other sites
Do I need to make any modifications to a particle's world matrix or do I just need to alter the camera matrix?

Share on other sites
Yes, that's possible as well. :)

In my old code, I used glRotatef() and translate calls to position my particles, but that required every particle to have it's own glBegin/end etc...

The way I do it now, you can simply smack all your particles in one go, and doing it this way is also faster + you get to use vertex arrays.. ;)

I got some sample code that I could post, simple "reset" of the camera matrix - thus making the quad face the camera, when I get home from work, if your interested? But I really recommend to take the full step on this one, since it's definitly worth it! :D

Poor mans billboarding could be implemented as this:

get the direction of the camera (pitch and yaw).

for (each particle)
{
glPushMatrix();
glRotatef(-camera.yaw,1,0,0);
glRotatef(-camera.pitch,0,1,0);
Particle.draw(particle.pos);
glPopMatrix();
}

Note, that this means particles does not face the camera, but rather looking in the direction of the camera, as if the camera would be infite away.

Could work for fast particle systems thou, since no-one really cares when you're shooting people to bits! ;)

Peace!

EDIT:

inline void StartBillboard(){	float modelview[16];	int i,j;	// save the current modelview matrix  	glPushMatrix();	// get the current modelview matrix	glGetFloatv(GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX , modelview);        // undo all rotations	// beware all scaling is lost as well	for( i=0; i<3; i++ )	    for( j=0; j<3; j++ ) {		if ( i==j )		    modelview[i*4+j] = 1.0;		else	  	    modelview[i*4+j] = 0.0;	    }	// set the modelview with no rotations	glLoadMatrixf(modelview);}inline void EndBillboard(){// restore the previously// stored modelview matrixglPopMatrix();}Usage:StartBillboard();glBegin(GL_QUADS);  jadadadada...glEnd();EndBillboard();

[Edited by - Rasmadrak on October 21, 2005 8:50:34 AM]

Share on other sites
I've read the tutorial at LightHouse3D and remember seeing the piece of code you posted (i.e. Cheap Spherical Billboards).

I am trying to implement True Spherical Billboards and even though I use the exact same code, I am still getting errors.

I would appreciate if you posted the code that you are currently using.

Share on other sites
hehe, I did post the code I'm currently using, check the link "Clicky"! :)

Share on other sites
I thought you were a different poster, :p

Your technique requires that I manipulate the mesh's vertices diretly. I'd rather not mess with the vertices and manipulate the matrices to achieve the same effect. Is that not possible?

Share on other sites
I don't think it's possible to not mess with the particles if you want dynamic size AND using vertex arrays or VBO's...

however, if you stick to using immediate mode, you could simply use the code from lighthouse, since it works great! :)
When you say mesh, is it a quad or an actual object (a rock etc)...?

if it's more than a quad, you should store it as a display list or something similar... :)

Share on other sites
I am using immediate mode and the particles in this case are just quads, but they can be any kind of shape (e.g. spheres, cubes, etc).

It is just that when I use quads, I'd like them to be facing the viewer at all times.

If and when I get the particle system working properly, then I'll try to optimise.

Share on other sites
I fixed it! I was making two mistakes, the lookAt vector was not properly initialised (i.e. 0,0,0 instead of 0,0,1) and I was applying the particle's composite transformation matrix AFTER I had manipulated the camera matrix, not before. Now it works fine and I am a happy bunny. :)

Thanks for the input.

Create an account

Register a new account

• Forum Statistics

• Total Topics
628342
• Total Posts
2982176
• Similar Content

• Hi all,

I'm starting OpenGL using a tut on the Web. But at this point I would like to know the primitives needed for creating a window using OpenGL. So on Windows and using MS VS 2017, what is the simplest code required to render a window with the title of "First Rectangle", please?

• Hi, New here.
I need some help. My fiance and I like to play this mobile game online that goes by real time. Her and I are always working but when we have free time we like to play this game. We don't always got time throughout the day to Queue Buildings, troops, Upgrades....etc....
I was told to look into DLL Injection and OpenGL/DirectX Hooking. Is this true? Is this what I need to learn?
How do I read the Android files, or modify the files, or get the in-game tags/variables for the game I want?
Any assistance on this would be most appreciated. I been everywhere and seems no one knows or is to lazy to help me out. It would be nice to have assistance for once. I don't know what I need to learn.
So links of topics I need to learn within the comment section would be SOOOOO.....Helpful. Anything to just get me started.
Thanks,
Dejay Hextrix
• By mellinoe
Hi all,
First time poster here, although I've been reading posts here for quite a while. This place has been invaluable for learning graphics programming -- thanks for a great resource!
Right now, I'm working on a graphics abstraction layer for .NET which supports D3D11, Vulkan, and OpenGL at the moment. I have implemented most of my planned features already, and things are working well. Some remaining features that I am planning are Compute Shaders, and some flavor of read-write shader resources. At the moment, my shaders can just get simple read-only access to a uniform (or constant) buffer, a texture, or a sampler. Unfortunately, I'm having a tough time grasping the distinctions between all of the different kinds of read-write resources that are available. In D3D alone, there seem to be 5 or 6 different kinds of resources with similar but different characteristics. On top of that, I get the impression that some of them are more or less "obsoleted" by the newer kinds, and don't have much of a place in modern code. There seem to be a few pivots:
The data source/destination (buffer or texture) Read-write or read-only Structured or unstructured (?) Ordered vs unordered (?) These are just my observations based on a lot of MSDN and OpenGL doc reading. For my library, I'm not interested in exposing every possibility to the user -- just trying to find a good "middle-ground" that can be represented cleanly across API's which is good enough for common scenarios.
Can anyone give a sort of "overview" of the different options, and perhaps compare/contrast the concepts between Direct3D, OpenGL, and Vulkan? I'd also be very interested in hearing how other folks have abstracted these concepts in their libraries.
• By aejt
I recently started getting into graphics programming (2nd try, first try was many years ago) and I'm working on a 3d rendering engine which I hope to be able to make a 3D game with sooner or later. I have plenty of C++ experience, but not a lot when it comes to graphics, and while it's definitely going much better this time, I'm having trouble figuring out how assets are usually handled by engines.
I'm not having trouble with handling the GPU resources, but more so with how the resources should be defined and used in the system (materials, models, etc).
This is my plan now, I've implemented most of it except for the XML parts and factories and those are the ones I'm not sure of at all:
I have these classes:
For GPU resources:
Geometry: holds and manages everything needed to render a geometry: VAO, VBO, EBO. Texture: holds and manages a texture which is loaded into the GPU. Shader: holds and manages a shader which is loaded into the GPU. For assets relying on GPU resources:
Material: holds a shader resource, multiple texture resources, as well as uniform settings. Mesh: holds a geometry and a material. Model: holds multiple meshes, possibly in a tree structure to more easily support skinning later on? For handling GPU resources:
ResourceCache<T>: T can be any resource loaded into the GPU. It owns these resources and only hands out handles to them on request (currently string identifiers are used when requesting handles, but all resources are stored in a vector and each handle only contains resource's index in that vector) Resource<T>: The handles given out from ResourceCache. The handles are reference counted and to get the underlying resource you simply deference like with pointers (*handle).
And my plan is to define everything into these XML documents to abstract away files:
Resources.xml for ref-counted GPU resources (geometry, shaders, textures) Resources are assigned names/ids and resource files, and possibly some attributes (what vertex attributes does this geometry have? what vertex attributes does this shader expect? what uniforms does this shader use? and so on) Are reference counted using ResourceCache<T> Assets.xml for assets using the GPU resources (materials, meshes, models) Assets are not reference counted, but they hold handles to ref-counted resources. References the resources defined in Resources.xml by names/ids. The XMLs are loaded into some structure in memory which is then used for loading the resources/assets using factory classes:
Factory classes for resources:
For example, a texture factory could contain the texture definitions from the XML containing data about textures in the game, as well as a cache containing all loaded textures. This means it has mappings from each name/id to a file and when asked to load a texture with a name/id, it can look up its path and use a "BinaryLoader" to either load the file and create the resource directly, or asynchronously load the file's data into a queue which then can be read from later to create the resources synchronously in the GL context. These factories only return handles.
Factory classes for assets:
Much like for resources, these classes contain the definitions for the assets they can load. For example, with the definition the MaterialFactory will know which shader, textures and possibly uniform a certain material has, and with the help of TextureFactory and ShaderFactory, it can retrieve handles to the resources it needs (Shader + Textures), setup itself from XML data (uniform values), and return a created instance of requested material. These factories return actual instances, not handles (but the instances contain handles).

Is this a good or commonly used approach? Is this going to bite me in the ass later on? Are there other more preferable approaches? Is this outside of the scope of a 3d renderer and should be on the engine side? I'd love to receive and kind of advice or suggestions!
Thanks!
• By nedondev
I 'm learning how to create game by using opengl with c/c++ coding, so here is my fist game. In video description also have game contain in Dropbox. May be I will make it better in future.
Thanks.

• 9
• 24
• 9
• 9
• 13