Chapter Four

Attributes of graphics
primitives

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 Outline
 Introduction

 Colour Attribute

 OpenGL Colour Attributes

 Point Attributes

 Line Attributes

 Fill-Area Attributes

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 Introduction
 In this chapter we will consider the subject of attributes of graphics
primitives.
 We can define an attribute of a primitive as a parameter that affects the
way the primitive is displayed.
 OpenGL is a state system: it maintains a list of current state variables
that are used to modify the appearance of each primitive as it is
displayed.
 Therefore these state variables represent the attributes of the
primitives.
 The values of state variables remain in effect until new values are
specified, and changes to state variables affects primitives drawn after
the change.
 The rest of this chapter is structured according to the type of primitive
that the attribute affects. We will look at attributes of point primitives,
line primitives, fill-area primitives.

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 Color attribute
 In the pervious chapter example we defined values for two colour state
variables: the drawing colour and the background colour.
 We also saw that we can define colours in two different ways:

 RGB: the colour is defined as the combination of its red, green and
blue components.
 RGBA: the colour is defined as the combination of its red, green and
blue components together with an alpha value, which indicates
the degree of opacity/transparency of the colour.

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 OpenGL Colour Attributes.…
 We have already seen how to modify the drawing and background
colours in the simple OpenGL program in pervious chapter.
 To recap, we change the current drawing colour using the glColor*
function.
 We change the current background colour using the glClearColor
function.
 The background colour is always set using an RGBA colour
representation.
 The drawing colour can be set using either RGB or RGBA
representations.

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Cont…
 The following are all valid examples of setting the drawing
and background colours:
 glColor3f(1.0,0.0,0.0); // set drawing colour to red
 glColor4f(0.0,1.0,0.0,0.05); // set drawing colour to
semi-transparent green
 glClearColor(1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0); // set background colour to
opaque white

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Cont.…

 Before we do any drawing in OpenGL, we must define a frame buffer.

 If we want to do colour drawing then we must specify that we want a
colour frame buffer.
 The following line defines a single direct storage colour frame buffer
with red, green and blue components:
 glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_SINGLE|GLUT_RGB).
 In order to store alpha values in the frame buffer we must change the
second argument to GLUT_RGBA.

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 Point Attributes

 Points are the simplest type of primitive so the only attributes we can
modify are the colour and size of the point.
 To change the size of points in pixels we use:

 glPointSize(size);

 All points in OpenGL are drawn as squares with a side length equal
to the point size.
 The default point size is 1 pixel.

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 Line Attributes
 The attributes of line primitives that we can modify include the
following:-
 Line colour

 Line width

 Line style (solid/dashed etc)

1. Line Width
 The simplest and most common technique for increasing the width of a
line is to plot a line of width 1 pixel, and then add extra pixels in either
the horizontal or vertical directions.

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Cont.…
 Which of these two approaches we use depends on the gradient m of
the line. We identify the following cases:-
 If |m| ≤ 1 plot extra pixels vertically.
 If |m| > 1, plot extra pixels horizontally.

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Cont.…
 To change the line width we use the glLineWidth routine. .

 This takes a single floating point argument (which is rounded to the

nearest integer) indicating the thickness of the line in pixels. For
example:-
 glLineWidth(4.3);
 This value will be used for all subsequent line primitives until the next
call to glLineWidth.
2. Line Style
 The style of a line refers to whether it is plotted as a solid line, dotted,
or dashed.
 The normal approach to changing line style is to define a pixel mask.

 A pixel mask specifies a sequence of bit values that determine

whether pixels in the plotted line should be on or off.
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Cont.…
 For example, the pixel mask 11111000 means a dash length of 5 pixels

followed by a spacing of 3 pixels.

 In other words, if the bit in the pixel mask is a 1, we plot a pixel, and if

it is a zero, we leave a space.

 The line style is specified using a pixel mask.

 First we must enable the line stipple feature of OpenGL using the

following line: glEnable(GL_LINE_STIPPLE);

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 Next, we use the glLineStipple function to define the line style.
 glLineStipple takes two arguments: a repeat factor, which specifies
how many times each bit in the pixel mask should be repeated, and a
pattern, which is a 16-bit pixel mask.
 If factor is 3, for example, each bit in the pattern will be used three
times before the next bit in the pattern is used.

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Cont.…
 For example, the code shown below draws the dashed line shown to
the right.
 glEnable(GL_LINE_STIPPLE);
 glLineWidth(3.0);
 glLineStipple(1, 0x00FF);
 glBegin(GL_LINE_STRIP);
 glVertex2i(100,100);
 glVertex2i(150,100);
 glVertex2i(150,200);
 glVertex2i(250,250);
 glEnd();
 glDisable(GL_LINE_STIPPLE);

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 Fill-Area Attributes
 The most important attribute for fill-area polygons is whether they are
filled or not.
 We can either draw a filled polygon or drawn the outline only. Drawing
the outline only is known as wireframe rendering.
 If the polygon is to be filled we can specify a fill style.

 OpenGL provides a number of features to modify the appearance of fill-

area polygons.
 First, we can choose to fill the polygon or just display an outline (i.e.
wireframe rendering).
 We do this by changing the display mode using the glPolygonMode
routine. The basic form of this function is:-
 glPolygonMode(face, displayMode);

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Cont.…
 Here, the face argument can take any of the following values:-

 GL_FRONT: apply changes to front-faces of polygons only.

 GL_BACK: apply changes to back-faces of polygons only.

 GL_FRONT_AND_BACK: apply changes to front and back faces of

polygons.
 The displayMode argument can take any of these values:

 GL_FILL: fill the polygon faces.

 GL_LINE: draw only the edges of the polygons (wireframe

rendering)
 GL_POINT: draw only the vertices of the polygons.

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Cont.….
 glPolygonMode (GL_FRONT, GL_LINE);

 glBegin(GL_POLYGON);

 glVertex2i(350,250);
 glVertex2i(400,300);
 glVertex2i(400,350);
 glVertex2i(300,250);
 glEnd();

 In addition to changing the polygon drawing mode, we can also specify

a fill pattern for polygons.
 We do this using the polygon stipple feature of OpenGL.

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Cont.…
 The steps can be summarised as:-
 Define a fill pattern
 Enable the polygon stipple feature of OpenGL
 Draw polygons
 For example, the following code draws an eight-sided polygon with a fill pattern .
GLubyte fillPattern[] = {0x00, 0xFF};
glPolygonStipple(fillPattern);
glEnable(GL_POLYGON_STIPPLE);
glBegin(GL_POLYGON);
glVertex2i(350,250);
glVertex2i(400,300);
glVertex2i(400,350);
glVertex2i(350,400);
glVertex2i(300,400);
glVertex2i(250,350);
glVertex2i(250,300);
glVertex2i(300,250);
glEnd();
glDisable(GL_POLYGO_STIPPLE);

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 Exercise
 Write an OpenCL program that display the following image.

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 Next class
Chapter five Transformation ????

Thank you .

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