Hi!

I'm making a game using SDL and OpenGL and I've thought about how I should handle transparency in images. I don't think color keying is a good option, so the method I'm going to use is that I'm going to utilize the alpha channel on images. If I've understood it right, you have to tell the computer what the alpha channel means, so what I would want to do is to tell the computer that the alpha channel represents transparency. When I try to use the alpha channel for transparency, every pixel that doesn't have 100% opacity is given the color FFFFFF.

My question is simply: how do I set the alpha channel to transparency with OpenGL?

Thanks for the link :) At the start of my application I enable blending like so glEnable( GL_BLEND ) and then write glBlendFunc(GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA), every texture I draw don't show up on the screen even though all of them are completely opaque. I tried all of the argument combinations provided under "Examples", but I get the same issue. The equations are a little bit cryptic to me, so I'm sort of having trouble solving my issue. Any suggestions?

In order for us to help with your problem, you need to provide specifics: post relevant code (setup, render, etc...) and perhaps post a screenshot of the actual result at one of the image sharing sites such as imgur.com along with a description of what you expect to happen so we can compare it with what is actually happening. As you might imagine, merely posting a sentence such as "every texture I draw don't show up on the screen" really isn't all that helpful for debugging.

I use SDL for everything except for rendering, which I use OpenGL for. I initialize OpenGL with this function (this is with blending enabled):

bool initGL()
{
    //Set the viewport
    glViewport( 0, 0, SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT );

    //Initialize Projection Matrix
    glMatrixMode( GL_PROJECTION );
    glLoadIdentity();
    glOrtho( 0.0, SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT, 0.0, 1.0, -1.0 );

    //Initialize Modelview Matrix
    glMatrixMode( GL_MODELVIEW );
    glLoadIdentity();

    //Initialize clear color
    glClearColor( 0.f, 0.f, 0.f, 1.f );

    //Enable texturing
    glEnable( GL_TEXTURE_2D );

    //Enable blending
    glBlendFunc(GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA);
    glEnable( GL_BLEND );

    //Check for error
    GLenum error = glGetError();
    if( error != GL_NO_ERROR )
    {
        printf( "Error initializing OpenGL!\n" );
        return false;
    }

    return true;
}

The Image in this post shows what the application renders without the enabling of blending on the left side, the right side is what it renders when I enable blending. The blue window within the application is made out of pieces of textures for the frame and the center is a colored quad, so when I render textures, they're not shown, but when I render geometrical shapes without textures, they're shown.

The for the rendering of that blue window within my application is quite large, so I'm just going to take out the rendering of one piece of texture and the rendering of a non-textured quad:

Non-texture quad rendering:

        /******Window fill******/

	glLoadIdentity();		//Remove any previous transformations
	glDisable( GL_TEXTURE_2D );		//Temporarily disable textures so that the colors won't get messed up

	glTranslatef( box.x + ThemeTemplate->quadWidth, box.y + ThemeTemplate->quadHeight, 0.f ); //Move to rendering point

	//Render the window fill
	glColor3ub( 0, 17, 34 );
        glBegin( GL_QUADS );
            glVertex2f( 0.f, 0.f );
            glVertex2f( box.w - ( ThemeTemplate->quadWidth * 2 ), 0.f );
            glVertex2f( box.w - ( ThemeTemplate->quadWidth * 2 ), box.h - ( ThemeTemplate->quadHeight * 2 ) );
            glVertex2f( 0.f, box.h - ( ThemeTemplate->quadHeight * 2 ) );
        glEnd();

	glEnable( GL_TEXTURE_2D );		//Re-enable textures
	glColor3f( 1, 1, 1 );		//Reset the color

	/******------End------******/

I basically just render a quad at a preset location with the color R0 G17 B34 and then reset the color to FFFFFF so that the next thing that's rendered won't have its colors messed up by this quad's colors.

Texture rendering:

/******Top edge******/

glLoadIdentity();		//Remove any previous transformations

//Texture coordinates
ThemeTemplate->texLeft = 16.f / TexWidth;
ThemeTemplate->texRight = 18.f / TexWidth;
ThemeTemplate->texTop = 0.f;
ThemeTemplate->texBottom = 8.f / TexHeight;

//Set translation point
TranslateX = box.x + ThemeTemplate->quadWidth;
TranslateY = box.y;

glTranslatef( TranslateX, TranslateY, 0.f );		//Move to rendering point

//Fill the whole space
for ( int positionX = 0; positionX < ( box.w - ( ThemeTemplate->quadWidth * 2 ) ); positionX += 2 )
{
	//Render textured quad
	glBegin( GL_QUADS );
	   glTexCoord2f( ThemeTemplate->texLeft,  ThemeTemplate->texTop );    glVertex2f          ( 0.f,	0.f );

	  glTexCoord2f( ThemeTemplate->texRight, ThemeTemplate->texTop );    glVertex2f(          2.f,	0.f );

	  glTexCoord2f( ThemeTemplate->texRight, ThemeTemplate->texBottom ); glVertex2f(          2.f,	ThemeTemplate->quadHeight );

	  glTexCoord2f( ThemeTemplate->texLeft,  ThemeTemplate->texBottom ); glVertex2f(          0.f,	ThemeTemplate->quadHeight );
	glEnd();

	glTranslatef( 2, 0, 0.f );	//Update rendering point
}

/******------End------******/

This is the top egde of the window's frame, I first select a piece of a sprite sheet and then set the rendering point. The frame is build up by small textures lined up to form a frame, so the for loop just makes sure that the textures are rendered next to each other. I then simply make a quad and render a texture that comes from a section of a spritesheet, this section is set with 'ThemeTemplate->texLeft' ect.

I'm quite confused when it comes to the source of the problem as I'm new to OpenGL, but perhaps the problem lies in my loading of textures?

(Sorry for the code dump)

bool Texture::load_texture( SDL_Surface *image )
{
	// Check that the image's width is a power of 2
        if ( (image->w & (image->w - 1)) != 0 )
	   fprintf( stderr, "warning: image.bmp's width is not a power of 2\n");
    
        // Also check if the height is a power of 2
        if ( (image->h & (image->h - 1)) != 0 )
           fprintf( stderr, "warning: image.bmp's height is not a power of 2\n");

	//Get the number of channels in the SDL_Surface
	nOfColors = image->format->BytesPerPixel;
	if ( nOfColors == 4 )
	{
		fprintf( stderr, "4 channels on texture\n" );
		if ( image->format->Rmask == 0x000000ff )
			texFormat = GL_RGBA;
		else
			texFormat = GL_BGRA;
	}
	else if ( nOfColors == 3 )
	{
		fprintf( stderr, "3 channels on texture\n" );
		if ( image->format->Rmask == 0x000000ff )
			texFormat = GL_RGB;
		else
			texFormat = GL_BGR;
	}
	else
	{
		fprintf( stderr, "warning: the image is not truecolor\n" );
		//This error should not go unhandled
	}
    
        // Have OpenGL generate a texture object handle for us
        glGenTextures( 1, &data );
    
        // Bind the texture object
        glBindTexture( GL_TEXTURE_2D, data );
        
        // Edit the texture object's image data using the information SDL_Surface gives us
	glTexImage2D( GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, nOfColors, image->w, image->h, 0, texFormat, GL_        UNSIGNED_BYTE, image->pixels );

	// Set the texture's stretching properties
        glTexParameteri( GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR );
        glTexParameteri( GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR );

	// Unbind texture
        glBindTexture( GL_TEXTURE_2D, NULL );

	// Save the dimensions of the texture
	TextureWidth = (float)image->w;
	TextureHeight = (float)image->h;

	return true;
}

The output to stderr is "4 channels on texture", for every texture, so all of the textures in my application has 4 channels. (I'm loading .png files, so they should also have 4 channels).

Let me know if there's something else you need to know.

You need to call glBindTexture( GL_TEXTURE_2D, yourTextureID ); before you call glBegin( GL_QUADS ) for your textured quads. Are you doing this?

Yes, there's a line in the last code snippet 'bool Texture::load_texture( SDL_Surface *image )' where I call that function

// Bind the texture object
glBindTexture( GL_TEXTURE_2D, data );

This line is executed before I draw anything.

I also forgot to show the picture, so here it is: https://twitter.com/TheMagicalPot/status/359349302939754496

"The Image in this post shows what the application renders without the enabling of blending on the left side, the right side is what it renders when I enable blending. The blue window within the application is made out of pieces of textures for the frame and the center is a colored quad, so when I render textures, they're not shown, but when I render geometrical shapes without textures, they're shown."

As a simple test, delete glBindTexture( GL_TEXTURE_2D, NULL )

It didn't solve the problem. I forgot to add a piece of code, I bind the texture right before I render it:

glBindTexture( GL_TEXTURE_2D, ThemeTemplate->TemplateSheet->get_data() );		//Set texture ID

I really don't know what the problem is, but maybe it has something to do with the arguments passed when I enable blending?