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Lessons 46 - 48

Lesson46 screenshot

Fullscreen AntiAliasing

Need a tutorial that will make your OpenGL applications look better? A big problem we all run into is aliasing. That is, the square edged "jaggies" that exist on diagonal lines in relation to the square pixels that exist on your screen. In this tutorial you will use Anti-Aliasing to smudge those "jaggies" in order to create a smoother edge for objects. We achieve this through "Multisampling". Fullscreen AntiAliasing is something that non-realtime rendering programs have always had an advantage in. However, with current hardware, we're able to pull off the same effect real time. The ARB_MULTISAMPLE extension allows us to do this. Like any other Extension based tutorial, if your card does not support the extension used, the effect will not work on your machine or the program may fail to run. This tutorial was written by Colt "MainRoach" McAnlis. If you enjoy it, let him know!
Lesson47 Screenshot

CG Vertex Shader

Using vertex and fragment (or pixel) shaders to do some rendering dirty work can have numerous benefits. The most obvious is the movement of some of the graphics related CPU load off the CPU and onto the GPU. Cg provides a (reasonably) simple language for writing very powerful shaders. This tutorial has multiple aims. The first is to present a simple vertex shader that actually does something, without introducing unnecessary lighting etc… The second is to provide the basic mechanism for running the vertex shader with visible results using OpenGL. As such, it is aimed at the beginner interested in Cg who has a little experience in OpenGL. This tutorial was written by Owen Bourne. If you enjoy it, please take the time to email him and let him know!
Lesson 48 Screenshot

ArcBall Rotation

Wouldn’t it be great to rotate your model at will, just by using the mouse? With an ArcBall you can do just that. In this tutorial Terence J. Grant will touch on his implementation and considerations for adding ArcBall rotation to your own projects. His implementation of the ArcBall class is based on Bretton Wade’s, which is based on Ken Shoemake’s from the Graphic Gems series of books. However, his version has some bug fixing and optimizations. The example code was originally based on lesson 5. It has been spruced up a bit, and now includes code to render a torus, complete with normals. If you enjoy this tutorial send Terence an email and let him know!