Lighting

This tutorial will build on the previous tutorial, adding OpenGL colored lighting.

Enable Lighting
Position the Light Source
Setup Material Properties
Add Normals
Build and Run the Program

Lets get started.

Step 1: Enable Lighting

We're going to be using OpenGL lighting so the first thing to do is tell OpenGL we need it to do the lighting calculations for the geometry we send it. We do this by enabling lighting and enabling at least one OpenGL light source. Our revised InitializeGL() method looks like this.

void
MyWindow::InitializeGL()

{

   glClearColor(.1f, .1f, .1f, 1);

   glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST);

      

        
glEnable(GL_LIGHTING);

         glEnable(GL_LIGHT0);

         float lightColor[4]
= {1, 1, 1, 1};

        
glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_DIFFUSE, lightColor);

}

We enable OpenGL lighting and enable the first light (GL_LIGHT0). We then set the lights diffuse color to white. We won't use any ambient or specular light for this tutorial.

Step 2: Position the Light Source

We'll need to position our light source so it illuminates our cube. We add this code to our draw() method.

  
. . .

   gluLookAt(0, 0, 3, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0);

         float
lightPosition[4] = {5, 5, 5, 1};

        
glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_POSITION, lightPosition);

   glRotatef(rotation, 0, 1, 0);

   . . .

We've placed our light at (5, 5, 5) so it should shine on the upper right corner of our cube. Notice the one trailing the light position. This is the homogeneous coordinate and tells OpenGL we want a point light. If it was a zero the light would be a directional light and the (5, 5, 5) would specify the direction instead of a position.

Step 3: Setup Material Properties

When using OpenGL lighting we no longer set colors for our geometry. We need to set material properties. However, for this simple demo we can use some OpenGL functionality to use the colors we've already specified as the material properties we need. This will convert our glColor3f() calls to material property settings instead. We'll add this to our InitializeGL() method. We need to enable this functionality called color material and set the diffuse material property to track the colors we've set with glColor3f().

  
. . .

   float lightColor[4] = {1, 1, 1, 1};

   glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0, GL_DIFFUSE, lightColor);

      

        
glEnable(GL_COLOR_MATERIAL);

        
glColorMaterial(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_DIFFUSE);

}

Step4: Add Normals

The only thing left to do is add normal vectors to each of our quads that form the cube. We'll modify DrawCube() to include normals.

void
MyWindow::DrawCube()

{

   glBegin(GL_QUADS);

      // front

           
glNormal3f(0, 0, 1);

      glColor3f(1, 0, 0);

      glVertex3f(-1, 1, 1);

      glVertex3f(-1, -1, 1);

      glVertex3f(1, -1, 1);

      glVertex3f(1, 1, 1);

      

      // back

           
glNormal3f(0, 0, -1);

      glColor3f(0, 1, 0);

      glVertex3f(-1, 1, -1);

      glVertex3f(1, 1, -1);

      glVertex3f(1, -1, -1);

      glVertex3f(-1, -1, -1);

      

      // top

           
glNormal3f(0, 1, 0);

      glColor3f(0, 0, 1);

      glVertex3f(-1, 1, -1);

      glVertex3f(-1, 1, 1);

      glVertex3f(1, 1, 1);

      glVertex3f(1, 1, -1);

      

      // bottom

           
glNormal3f(0, -1, 0);

      glColor3f(1, 1, 0);

      glVertex3f(-1, -1, -1);

      glVertex3f(1, -1, -1);

      glVertex3f(1, -1, 1);

      glVertex3f(-1, -1, 1);

      

      // left

           
glNormal3f(-1, 0, 0);

      glColor3f(0, 1, 1);

      glVertex3f(-1, 1, -1);

      glVertex3f(-1, -1, -1);

      glVertex3f(-1, -1, 1);

      glVertex3f(-1, 1, 1);

      

      // right

           
glNormal3f(1, 0, 0);

      glColor3f(1, 0, 1);

      glVertex3f(1, 1, 1);

      glVertex3f(1, -1, 1);

      glVertex3f(1, -1, -1);

      glVertex3f(1, 1, -1);

   glEnd();

}

Step 5: Build and Run the Program

Ok we're ready to build and run our program.

Choose Build -> Build Solution to compile and link the program and Debug -> Start Without Debugging to run it.

Source code for this tutorial.

Go to the previous tutorial.
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