Introduction to Shaders: Attribute Values (Tweening)

#! /usr/bin/env python

Attribute Values (Tweening)

Screenshot Screenshot
This tutorial builds on the previous tutorial by:
  • defining attribute values in shaders
  • defining arrays to feed attribute values
  • eliminating most of our remaining legacy code
  • defining a simple "tween" geometry animation
As we have mentioned a number of times previous, the use of glVertexPointer and glColorPointer is part of the "legacy" OpenGL API. When using shader-based geometry there is no need to restrict oneself to a single position, colour or texture for a given vertex.
Just as we have defined arbitrary Uniform values to feed into our shaders, we can also define arbitrary "Vertex Attribute" values which can be fed data from our VBO just as with the glVertexPointer/glColorPointer mechanism.
For this tutorial, we're going to define two different "positions" for each vertex. The final vertex position will be determined by "mixing" the two positions according to a fractional uniform value we will pass into our shader. This kind of "tweening" can be used to animate continuous mesh models smoothly.
from OpenGLContext import testingcontext BaseContext = testingcontext.getInteractive() from OpenGL.GL import * from OpenGL.arrays import vbo from OpenGLContext.arrays import * from OpenGL.GL import shaders
This is our only new import, it's a utility Timer object from OpenGLContext which will generate events with "fraction()" values that can be used for animations.
from OpenGLContext.events.timer import Timer class TestContext( BaseContext ): """Demonstrates use of attribute types in GLSL """ def OnInit( self ): """Initialize the context"""
We've defined a uniform "tween" which represents the current fractional mix between the two positions.
When we were using the glVertexPointer/glColorPointer entry points, there were implicitly defined attribute values (gl_Vertex, gl_Color) that recieved our data-records. With legacy-free operation, we explicitly define the attribute values which will be used. They look very similar to the declarations for uniform values, save for the varying keyword.
vertex = shaders.compileShader(""" uniform float tween; attribute vec3 position; attribute vec3 tweened; attribute vec3 color; varying vec4 baseColor; void main() { gl_Position = gl_ModelViewProjectionMatrix * mix( vec4( position,1.0), vec4( tweened,1.0), tween ); baseColor = vec4(color,1.0); }""",GL_VERTEX_SHADER) fragment = shaders.compileShader(""" varying vec4 baseColor; void main() { gl_FragColor = baseColor; }""",GL_FRAGMENT_SHADER) self.shader = shaders.compileProgram(vertex,fragment)
Since our VBO now has two position records and one colour record, we have an extra 3 floats for each vertex record.
self.vbo = vbo.VBO( array( [ [ 0, 1, 0, 1,3,0, 0,1,0 ], [ -1,-1, 0, -1,-1,0, 1,1,0 ], [ 1,-1, 0, 1,-1,0, 0,1,1 ], [ 2,-1, 0, 2,-1,0, 1,0,0 ], [ 4,-1, 0, 4,-1,0, 0,1,0 ], [ 4, 1, 0, 4,9,0, 0,0,1 ], [ 2,-1, 0, 2,-1,0, 1,0,0 ], [ 4, 1, 0, 1,3,0, 0,0,1 ], [ 2, 1, 0, 1,-1,0, 0,1,1 ], ],'f') )
As with uniforms, we must use opaque "location" values to refer to our attributes when calling into the GL.
self.position_location = glGetAttribLocation( self.shader, 'position' ) self.tweened_location = glGetAttribLocation( self.shader, 'tweened', ) self.color_location = glGetAttribLocation( self.shader, 'color' ) self.tween_location = glGetUniformLocation( self.shader, 'tween', )
The OpenGLContext timer class is setup here to provide a 0.0 -> 1.0 animation event and pass it to the given function.
self.time = Timer( duration = 2.0, repeating = 1 ) self.time.addEventHandler( "fraction", self.OnTimerFraction ) self.time.register (self) self.time.start () def Render( self, mode = 0): """Render the geometry for the scene.""" BaseContext.Render( self, mode ) glUseProgram(self.shader)
We pass in the current (for this frame) value of our animation fraction. The timer will generate events to update this value during idle time.
glUniform1f( self.tween_location, self.tween_fraction ) try:
Each attribute array, just as with the legacy pointer functions, will bind to the current (Vertex) VBO. Because we are only using one VBO, we can bind once. If our position arrays were stored in different VBOs, we would need to bind and unbind the VBO for the corresponding glVertexAttribPointer calls.
self.vbo.bind() try:
As with the legacy pointers, we have to explicitly enable the retrieval of values, without this, the GL would attempt to read a value for every attribute that is defined. Non-enabled attributes get default values for each vertex. It is also possible to specify a single value for an attribute to be used for each vertex (as though the attribute were a uniform).
glEnableVertexAttribArray( self.position_location ) glEnableVertexAttribArray( self.tweened_location ) glEnableVertexAttribArray( self.color_location )
Our vertex array is now 36 bytes/record. The glVertexAttribPointer calls are very similar to the legacy calls, save that they provide the attribute location into which the data-array will feed.
stride = 9*4 glVertexAttribPointer( self.position_location, 3, GL_FLOAT,False, stride, self.vbo ) glVertexAttribPointer( self.tweened_location, 3, GL_FLOAT,False, stride, self.vbo+12 ) glVertexAttribPointer( self.color_location, 3, GL_FLOAT,False, stride, self.vbo+24 ) glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, 0, 9) finally: self.vbo.unbind()
As with the legacy pointer operations, we want to clean up our array enabling so that any later calls will not cause seg-faults when they try to read records from these arrays (potentially beyond the end of the arrays).
glDisableVertexAttribArray( self.position_location ) glDisableVertexAttribArray( self.tweened_location ) glDisableVertexAttribArray( self.color_location ) finally: glUseProgram( 0 )
Our trivial event-handler function simply stores the event's fraction as our tween_fraction value.
tween_fraction = 0.0 def OnTimerFraction( self, event ): frac = event.fraction() if frac > .5: frac = 1.0-frac frac *= 2 self.tween_fraction =frac self.triggerRedraw() if __name__ == "__main__": TestContext.ContextMainLoop()
On-GPU tweening would be likely to use an extremely large array with a character's key-frame poses stored in sequence (as opposed to being packed into huge vertex records). The animation code would choose the two key-frames and enable the data-pointers for those key-frames. The code *could* just as store every frame of every animation as part of the same vertex record, but that would likely cause far more data to be loaded at render-time than in the sequential cases.