OpenGL Programming Guide (Addison-Wesley Publishing Company)

OpenGL Programming Guide

Viewing Transformations

A viewing transformation changes the position and orientation of the viewpoint. If you recall the camera analogy, the viewing transformation positions the camera tripod, pointing the camera toward the model. Just as you move the camera to some position and rotate it until it points in the desired direction, viewing transformations are generally composed of translations and rotations. Also remember that, to achieve a certain scene composition in the final image or photograph, either you can move the camera, or you can move all the objects in the opposite direction. Thus, a modeling transformation that rotates an object counterclockwise is equivalent to a viewing transformation that rotates the camera clockwise, for example. Finally, keep in mind that the viewing transformation commands must be called before any modeling transformations are performed, so that the modeling transformations take effect on the objects first.

You can accomplish a viewing transformation in any of several ways, as described below. You can also choose to use the default location and orientation of the viewpoint, which is at the origin, looking down the negative z-axis.

Use one or more modeling transformation commands (that is, glTranslate*() and glRotate*()). You can think of the effect of these transformations as moving the camera position or as moving all the objects in the world, relative to a stationary camera.
Use the Utility Library routine gluLookAt() to define a line of sight. This routine encapsulates a series of rotation and translation commands.
Create your own utility routine that encapsulates rotations and translations. Some applications might require custom routines that allow you to specify the viewing transformation in a convenient way. For example, you might want to specify the roll, pitch, and heading rotation angles of a plane in flight, or you might want to specify a transformation in terms of polar coordinates for a camera that's orbiting around an object.

Using glTranslate() and glRotate()

When you use modeling transformation commands to emulate viewing transformations, you're trying to move the viewpoint in a desired way while keeping the objects in the world stationary. Since the viewpoint is initially located at the origin and since objects are often most easily constructed there as well (see Figure 3-9 ), in general you have to perform some transformation so that the objects can be viewed. Note that, as shown in the figure, the camera initially points down the negative z-axis. (You're seeing the back of the camera.)

[IMAGE]

Figure 3-9 : Object and Viewpoint at the Origin

In the simplest case, you can move the viewpoint backward, away from the objects; this has the same effect as moving the objects forward, or away from the viewpoint. Remember that by default forward is down the negative z-axis; if you rotate the viewpoint, forward has a different meaning. So, to put 5 units of distance between the viewpoint and the objects by moving the viewpoint, as shown in Figure 3-10 , use

glTranslatef(0.0, 0.0, -5.0);

[IMAGE]

Figure 3-10 : Separating the Viewpoint and the Object

Now suppose you want to view the objects from the side. Should you issue a rotate command before or after the translate command? If you're thinking in terms of a grand, fixed coordinate system, first imagine both the object and the camera at the origin. You could rotate the object first and then move it away from the camera so that the desired side is visible. Since you know that with the fixed coordinate system approach, commands have to be issued in the opposite order in which they should take effect, you know that you need to write the translate command first in your code and follow it with the rotate command.

Now let's use the local coordinate system approach. In this case, think about moving the object and its local coordinate system away from the origin; then, the rotate command is carried out using the now-translated coordinate system. With this approach, commands are issued in the order in which they're applied, so once again the translate command comes first. Thus, the sequence of transformation commands to produce the desired result is

glTranslatef(0.0, 0.0, -5.0);
glRotatef(90.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0);

If you're having trouble keeping track of the effect of successive matrix multiplications, try using both the fixed and local coordinate system approaches and see whether one makes more sense to you. Note that with the fixed coordinate system, rotations always occur about the grand origin, whereas with the local coordinate system, rotations occur about the origin of the local system. You might also try using the gluLookAt() utility routine described in the next section.

Using the gluLookAt() Utility Routine

Often, programmers construct a scene around the origin or some other convenient location, then they want to look at it from an arbitrary point to get a good view of it. As its name suggests, the gluLookAt() utility routine is designed for just this purpose. It takes three sets of arguments, which specify the location of the viewpoint, define a reference point toward which the camera is aimed, and indicate which direction is up. Choose the viewpoint to yield the desired view of the scene. The reference point is typically somewhere in the middle of the scene: If you've built your scene at the origin, the reference point is probably the origin. It might be a little trickier to specify the correct up-vector. Again, if you've built some real-world scene at or around the origin, and if you've been taking the positive y-axis to point upward, then that's your up-vector for gluLookAt(). However, if you're designing a flight simulator, up is the direction perpendicular to the plane's wings, from the plane toward the sky when the plane is right-side up on the ground.

The gluLookAt() routine is particularly useful when you want to pan across a landscape, for instance. With a viewing volume that's symmetric in both x and y, the (eyex, eyey, eyez) point specified is always in the center of the image on the screen, so you can use a series of commands to move this point slightly, thereby panning across the scene.void gluLookAt(GLdouble eyex, GLdouble eyey, GLdouble eyez, GLdouble centerx, GLdouble centery, GLdouble centerz, GLdouble upx, GLdouble upy, GLdouble upz);

Defines a viewing matrix and multiplies it to the right of the current matrix. The desired viewpoint is specified by eyex, eyey, and eyez. The centerx, centery, and centerz arguments specify any point along the desired line of sight, but typically they're some point in the center of the scene being looked at. The upx, upy, and upz arguments indicate which direction is up (that is, the direction from the bottom to the top of the viewing volume).

Note that gluLookAt() is part of the Utility Library rather than the basic OpenGL library. This isn't because it's not useful, but because it encapsulates several basic OpenGL commands - specifically, glTranslate*() and glRotate*(). To see this, imagine a camera located at an arbitrary viewpoint and oriented according to a line of sight, both as specified with gluLookAt(), and a scene located at the origin. To "undo" what gluLookAt() does, you need to transform the camera so that it sits at the origin and points down the negative z-axis, the default position. A simple translate moves the camera to the origin. You can easily imagine a series of rotations about each of the three axes of a fixed coordinate system that would orient the camera so that it pointed toward negative z values. Since OpenGL allows rotation about an arbitrary axis, you can accomplish any desired rotation of the camera with a single glRotate*() command.

Advanced

To transform any arbitrary vector so that it's coincident with another arbitrary vector (for instance, the negative z-axis), you need to do a little mathematics. The axis about which you want to rotate is given by the cross product of the two normalized vectors. To find the angle of rotation, normalize the initial two vectors. The cosine of the desired angle between the vectors is equal to the dot product of the normalized vectors. To disambiguate between the two possible angles identified by the cosine (x degrees and x+180 degrees), recall that the length of the cross product of the normalized vectors equals the sine of the angle of rotation. (See Appendix F for definitions of cross and dot products.)

Creating a Custom Utility Routine

Advanced

For some specialized applications, you might want to define your own transformation routine. Since this is rarely done and in any case is a fairly advanced topic, it's left mostly as an exercise for the reader. The following exercises suggest two custom viewing transformations that might be useful.

Try This:

Try This

Suppose you're writing a flight simulator and you'd like to display the world from the point of view of the pilot of a plane. The world is described in a coordinate system with the origin on the runway and the plane at coordinates (x, y, z). Suppose further that the plane has some roll, pitch, and heading (these are rotation angles of the plane relative to its center of gravity).
Show that the following routine could serve as the viewing transformation:
```
void pilotView{GLdouble planex, GLdouble planey,
                 GLdouble planez, GLdouble roll,
                 GLdouble pitch, GLdouble heading)
{
      glRotated(roll, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0);
      glRotated(pitch, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0);
      glRotated(heading, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0);
      glTranslated(-planex, -planey, -planez);
}
```
Suppose your application involves orbiting the camera around an object that's centered at the origin. In this case, you'd like to specify the viewing transformation by using polar coordinates. Let the distance variable define the radius of the orbit, or how far the camera is from the origin. (Initially, the camera is moved distance units along the positive z-axis.) The azimuth describes the angle of rotation of the camera about the object in the x-y plane, measured from the positive y-axis. Similarly, elevation is the angle of rotation of the camera in the y-z plane, measured from the positive z-axis. Finally, twist represents the rotation of the viewing volume around its line of sight.
Show that the following routine could serve as the viewing transformation:
```
void polarView{GLdouble distance, GLdouble twist, 
   GLdouble elevation, GLdouble azimuth)
{
      glTranslated(0.0, 0.0, -distance);
      glRotated(-twist, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0);
      glRotated(-elevation, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0);
      glRotated(azimuth, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0);
}
```

OpenGL Programming Guide

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Viewing Transformations

Using glTranslate*() and glRotate*()

Using the gluLookAt() Utility Routine

Creating a Custom Utility Routine

Try This:

Using glTranslate() and glRotate()