[Interest] Qt3D: Wireframe

[Ch'Gans]

On 13 April 2017 at 14:38, Ch'Gans <chgans at gna.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I would like to be able to select at run-time how my entities are
> rendered (ideally on a per entity basis).
> I would like to have 3 choices:
> - 1. wireframe
> - 2. shaded
> - 3. shaded + wireframe
>
> I had a look at the wire frame QML example, and translated it to C++.
> The code is working. I have simplified the fragment shader, as i don't
> need fancy light effect, other than a shaded color per face.
> These shaders allow me to achieve 2 & 3. But my feeling is that i need
> something completely different to render a 'transparent' wireframe
> only.
> Reading through OpenGL materials, it looks like i need things like
> glPolygonMode, reading through Qt3D leads me to
> QGeometryRenderer::PrimitiveType.
>
> But i am having problems connecting the dots.
> PrimitiveType is a property of QGeometryRenderer, which means that it
> is closely related with my buffer data and how the data are arranged
> within the buffer.
> So If i want to switch from 'shaded' to wireframe I need to change my
> data (and my shader code too), surely there is to be a way to use the
> same data buffer to achieve the 3 rendering modes. Should I use a 2
> passes rendering? The first one renders (or not) the face shades and
> the second one renders (or not) the wireframes? Actually this should
> even be a 3 passes: back of wireframe (or not), shaded faces (or not)
> and front of wireframe (or not)...
> Is this the right approach? Or should I instead define 3 materials and
> simply switch the material as i want a different drawing style?
>
> Last thing is that my input data are triangulated polygon with holes,
> but i have as well access to the original polygon with holes alone.
> And i actually don't want to render the internal (triangulation) edges
> of my polygonal faces (up and down) or rectangular faces (side ones).
> So basically in shaded mode, i only need to calculate the color per
> geometric face (as oppose to triangular face) ...
>
> PS: I've spent serious time yesterday reading through
> https://learnopengl.com, although I think i now understand (way
> better) how OpenGL works and how to use it, Qt3D seems to be way more
> than a convenience wrapper around the OpenGL API.
> I couldn't find a place in Qt3D where you would manipulate OpenGL
> directly (eg calling glFooBar()). I am not even sure if it was design
> too do this sort of things.

Answering myself partially:
QRenderState provides lot of these. Eg.: glCullFace() => QCullFace,
glFrontFace() => QFrontFace, ...

Bu as far as i can understand OpenGL and Qt3D, i would say that Qt3D
simply doesn't support the OpenGL polygon mode. Maybe because it's
either sort-of deprecated, or there are other (better?) ways to do
this sort of things...

Chris

>
>
> Thanks,
> Chris