So - “translate(a,b)” effectively moves the origin a pixels right, b pixels up.
If I do “translate(a,b,c)” - what’s c? More specifically - what units? And/or what are the clipping planes?
I’m trying to plot things in a 3d volume - and they keep disappearing.
@Bortels, c is in the same units as a and b — that is, a and b aren’t strictly “pixels,” It’s just the way the default orthographic projection is set up. That is.
ortho( 0, WIDTH, 0, HEIGHT, -1, 1)
To understand clipping planes, imagine that the ortho() function creates a cube around your scene. The cube’s lowest extremity is 0,0,-1 and its farthest is WIDTH,HEIGHT,1. Anything that falls outside of the cube won’t be rendered, it will be “clipped” by the GPU. By default the near and far clipping planes do not provide much depth, you can change them, though.
It sounds like your 3D volumes are exceeding the clipping planes. Extend them in order to encompass your scene.
So, if you created a DEPTH value set to an arbitrary value, say 1000, you could do
ortho(0,0,0,WIDTH,HEIGHT,DEPTH)
And have a system where the “back” of the world was at 0 and the “front” at 1000?
I confess, I’ve left the 3D projections alone not because I don’t find them neat, but because I find the examples confusing… and I generaly grok both geometry and programming fairly well.
That’s correct, though the arguments to ortho are in this order: ortho( left, right, bottom, top, near, far)
Generally since everything is drawn at z=0 by default, you’d want your orthographic projection to heave a near plane of -depth and a far plane of depth.
With perspective projection the near plane must be greater than zero.
So - making sure I understand - depth is -1 to 1, with -1 on my side of the screen, and 1 into the screen? And I can change that with ortho()?
Good enough! (I was drawing planets, and when I put them in “deeper” - they just disappeared. This explains why…)
That’s correct, try it with -1000 to 1000 for example. (Note that the same 32 bit precision is stretched over the specified range.)