# Non rotating Polygon

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Is there any direct means by which I can have the Polygon facing always towards the user, despite applying any rotation to it? I am having a big scene rendered. Using my mouse and keys I should be able to rotate the scene. Currently I do that by aplying glRotate() to the entire scene, using 3 different glRotate() calls (one for x-axis, one for y-axis and one for z-axis). I have some polyongs in this scene. When I rotate the scene, I want the polygons facing towards the user. Is there any provision for this to be done?

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What you need to do is apply your rotations as you normally would, then when you want to render the front-facing polygons, copy the modelview matrix, reset the x and y rotation parts of the matrix to the ones you'd find in the identity matrix, load that matrix, and render the polygons as needed. In code:

  glPushMatrix();  GLfloat matrix[16];  glGetFloatv(GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX,matrix);  matrix[0] = 1.0f; matrix[1] = 0.0f; matrix[2] = 0.0f;//x  matrix[4] = 0.0f; matrix[5] = 1.0f; matrix[6] = 0.0f;//y  glLoadMatrixf(matrix);    //render them here    glPopMatrix();

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Wonderful. Thanks Gorax. I tried it. It worked very close to what was desired. But I had a doubt. The matrix you've given is:
matrix[0] = 1.0f; matrix[1] = 0.0f; matrix[2] = 0.0f;//x
matrix[4] = 0.0f; matrix[5] = 1.0f; matrix[6] = 0.0f;//y

I can't see see the 4th index, i.e. matrix[3]. Is it supposed to be:
matrix[0] = 1.0f; matrix[1] = 0.0f; matrix[2] = 0.0f;//x
matrix[3] = 0.0f; matrix[4] = 1.0f; matrix[5] = 0.0f;//y

Moreover, it works fine when I rotate it horizontally. But when taken an upper view of the scene, the polygons fail to face the user.

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Gorax gave you the right matrix there. remember it is a 4x4 matrix, not a 3x3!

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Oh. Great. Now I get the concept. But still, my second problem remains unresolved.

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