Light objects, material objects

OpenGL
1

Hi,

Actually, whenever some material has to be setup, we have to call glMaterial for every parameter of it. Couldn’t we create some kind of material objects ? Something like :

GLuint my_material[2];
GLfloat blue_color[] = {1,0,0,1};
glGenMaterials(1, my_materials);
glBindMaterial(GL_FRONT, my_materials[0]);
glBindMaterial(GL_BACK, my_materials[1]);
glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_AMBIENT_AND_DIFFUSE, blue_color);
glMaterialf(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_SHININESS, 100.f);

Then, using a material would consist in a single call to :
glBindMaterial(GL_FRONT, my_materials[0]);
and why not :
glBindMaterial(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, my_materials[0]);

On the same scheme, lights could be setup with :
GLuint my_light;
GLfloat yellow_color[] = [1,1,0,1};
glGenLights(1, &my_light);
glBindLight(GL_LIGHT0, my_light);
glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_SPECULAR, yellow_color);
glLightf(GL_LIGHT0, GL_LINEAR_ATTENUATION, 0.001f);

Then use it with :
glBindLight(GL_LIGHT0, my_light);
and certainly this would also be allowed :
glBindLight(GL_LIGHT5, my_light);

I know the concept of glGenX/glBindX/glDeleteX is redundant in OpenGL, but currently I’m tired of calling thousands of glLight and glMaterial commands. I know that display lists can help, but still display lists are less flexible (a light that has been setup on GL_LIGHT0 in a list will never end on GL_LIGHT1).

[This message has been edited by vincoof (edited 05-07-2003).]

2

Considering that so much focus is directed on vertex programs these days, which replace the glLight* and glMaterial* calls, I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of willingness for anyone to bother improving these models.

Now, an object model for vertex and fragment program parameters would be nice.

3

I agree that vertex and fragment programs grab much more attention, but I think the fully programmable models lack some kind of flexibility.

If your vertex program computes lighting with 3 lights, what if you want 2 lights only ? You have to bind a completely new vertex program, just because 4 lines out of the 100 lines of the vertex program have changed. That’s not something I really like to work with, so I keep vertex programs for critical cases only.

What do you mean by “object model for program parameters” ? I don’t get how the program parameters could be improved with an object model.

[This message has been edited by vincoof (edited 05-07-2003).]

4

Looping, and conditional branches, are coming in vertex shaders. They already exist in NV_vertex_program_2; it’s just a matter of time until ARB_vertex_program_2 supports them.

5

Fortunately, probably conditional branching and loops would resolve that kind of problem.
Unfortunately, I don’t think we really need cards that support vertex programs for supporting light and material objects. I mean, I’d like to use light and material objects on cards like TNT2 and Rage128.