Michael Bien's Weblog

New Getting Started with JOGL 2 tutorials

mbien — Sat, 4 Sep 2010 00:22:38 +0000

Thanks to Justin Stoecker, computer science graduate student at the University of Miami, JOGL gets a new set of getting started tutorials:

JOGL, or Java Bindings for OpenGL, allows Java programs to access the OpenGL API for graphics programming. The graphics code in JOGL programs will look almost identical to that found in C or C++ OpenGL programs, as the API is automatically generated from C header files. This is one of the greatest strengths of JOGL, as it is quite easy to port OpenGL programs written in C or C++ to JOGL; learning JOGL is essentially learning OpenGL[...]

Tutorials:

Thanks Justin!

JOGL 2 - Composeable Pipline

mbien — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:27:31 +0000

JOGL provides a feature called 'composeable pipeline' which can be quite useful in some situations. It enables you to put additional delegating layers between your java application and the OpenGL driver. A few usecases could be:

performance metrics
logging, debugging or diagnostics
to ignore specific function calls

It is very easy to set up. Just put this line into your code and the DebugGL layer will throw a GLException as soon an error occurs (you want this usually when you are developing the software).


    public void init(GLAutoDrawable drawable) {
        // wrap composeable pipeline in a Debug utility, all OpenGL error codes are automatically
        // converted to GLExceptions as soon as they appear
        drawable.setGL(new DebugGL3(drawable.getGL().getGL3()));
        //..
    }

Another predefined layer is TraceGL which intercepts all OpenGL calls and prints them to an output stream.


        drawable.setGL(new TraceGL3(drawable.getGL().getGL3(), System.out));

JogAmp at SIGGRAPH 2010

mbien — Sun, 23 May 2010 21:17:07 +0000

The JogAmp team will be present at SIGGRAPH this year:

3D & Multimedia Across Platforms and Devices Using JOGL
Tuesday, 27 July | 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM

This session discusses the features, contributions, and future of OpenGL, OpenCL, and OpenMax
across devices and OS exposed on top of Java using the JogAmp open-source libraries.

link to Session

hope to meet you there.

about JogAmp.
JogAmp is the home of high performance Java libraries for 3D Graphics, Multimedia and Processing. JogAmp consists currently of the projects JOGL, JOCL and JOAL which provide cross platform language bindings to the OpenGL, OpenCL, OpenAL and OpenMAX APIs.

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(yes i know i should start bogging again :))

JOGL 2 - OpenGL Profiles explained

mbien — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 20:20:41 +0000

June 16 2010, updated blogpost: OpenGL 4

JOGL 2 supports several OpenGL Profiles. In this blog entry I try to explain what profiles are and why they are needed.

History

SGI released the first OpenGL specification 1992. Since this point OpenGL 1.x constantly evolved (under the ARB and later Khronos Group) by adding new functions to the core API. This went well until programmable graphics hardware became mainstream and shaders became suddenly more flexible and efficient as the generic fixed function pipeline.

OpenGL 2.x was the last version in which you could freely mix the fixed function pipeline with the programmable pipeline (as a core feature).

With the release of OpenGL 3.0 the whole fixed function pipeline has been deprecated but you could still use it if you haven't requested a forward compatible context.

OpenGL 3.1 and 3.2 removed most deprecated functionality from core specification, however some implementations (e.g. Nvidia drivers) still allow to get them back via an optional compatibility extension. Since 3.1 was the first release which broke compatibility, it is often seen as major OpenGL 3 release.

JOGL 2 (JSR 231)

JOGL 1.1.1 lived in the timeframe up to OpenGL 3.0 which made it easy to stay in sync with the spec. To be able to solve the issue with the deprecation of functionality, JOGL 2 (JSR maintenance release) introduces an abstraction of the original OpenGL versioning called Profile. Profiles allow Java applications to be written in a way which allows compatibility with multiple OpenGL versions at the same time. Since OpenGL ES (GL for embedded systems) has overlapping functionality with OpenGL itself it opened the opportunity to add even Profiles which bridge desktop and embedded implementations. The class diagram below shows the dependencies between all available Profiles.

Before you start writing a JOGL application you will have to decide first which GLProfile you want to use. The code snippet below lists all currently supported profiles (extracted from GLProfile).

Current list of supported profiles and their mapping to the implementation versions


    /** The desktop OpenGL compatibility profile 4.x, with x >= 0, ie GL2 plus GL4.

        bc stands for backward compatibility. */
    public static final String GL4bc = "GL4bc";

    /** The desktop OpenGL core profile 4.x, with x >= 0 */
    public static final String GL4   = "GL4";

    /** The desktop OpenGL compatibility profile 3.x, with x >= 1, ie GL2 plus GL3.

        bc stands for backward compatibility. */
    public static final String GL3bc = "GL3bc";

    /** The desktop OpenGL core profile 3.x, with x >= 1 */
    public static final String GL3   = "GL3";

    /** The desktop OpenGL profile 1.x up to 3.0 */
    public static final String GL2   = "GL2";

    /** The embedded OpenGL profile ES 1.x, with x >= 0 */
    public static final String GLES1 = "GLES1";

    /** The embedded OpenGL profile ES 2.x, with x >= 0 */
    public static final String GLES2 = "GLES2";

    /** The intersection of the desktop GL2 and embedded ES1 profile */
    public static final String GL2ES1 = "GL2ES1";

    /** The intersection of the desktop GL3, GL2 and embedded ES2 profile */
    public static final String GL2ES2 = "GL2ES2";

    /** The intersection of the desktop GL3 and GL2 profile */
    public static final String GL2GL3 = "GL2GL3";

Note: GL2 Profile supports OpenGL up to version 3.0 (included) - this is not a bug: OpenGL 3.1 was the big game changer

The next two code snippets show the basic steps how to set up OpenGL with JOGL 2.

Context creation


        //create a profile, in this case OpenGL 3.1 or later
        GLProfile profile = GLProfile.get(GLProfile.GL3);
        
        //configure context
        GLCapabilities capabilities = new GLCapabilities(profile);
        capabilities.setNumSamples(2); // enable anti aliasing - just as a example
        capabilities.setSampleBuffers(true);
        
        //initialize a GLDrawable of your choice
        GLCanvas canvas = new GLCanvas(capabilities);

        //register GLEventListener
        canvas.addGLEventListener(...);
        //... (start rendering thread -> start rendering...)

Rendering


    public void display(GLAutoDrawable drawable) {
        GL3 gl = drawable.getGL().getGL3();
        gl.glClear(GL.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL.GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT);
        //.. render something
    }

Summary

Profiles make JOGL 2 very flexible and allow it to build modular and portable applications. For instance part A of an application can be written against the GL2ES2 interface and part B (which is more hardware specific) against the GL3 interface. This would in theory allow to reuse A in an embedded application and B could e.g. disable itself on old desktop hardware which runs only OpenGL 2.x or fall back to a GL2 implementation.

More information can be found on JogAmp.org (direct link to javadoc)

The next release of the OpenGL Pack for NetBeans will fully support JOGL 2. Beta builds can be found here (builds contain JOGL2 beta5):

NetBeans OpenGL Pack #2 in most popular plugins ranking

mbien — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:50:12 +0000

Since I haven't bloged for a long time about the OpenGL Pack, here are some notes for the last two update releases.

Beside updates and fixes the only new feature I added is the OpenGL Quicksearch. It uses the NetBeans 6.5 Quicksearch functionality (similar to ctrl + 3 in eclipse) and searches through several OpenGL resources.

currently are five resources available for search:

OpenGL SDK
OpenGL SDK Extension Registry
Nvidia Extensions
ATI/AMD Extensions
JOGL sources (only when JOGL module installed and used in at least one opened project)

power users can restrict the search to a category with the following prefixes ([prefix space] searchstring (space searchstring)*):
gl for GL SDK, ext for GL extensions, nv for Nvidia extensions, ati for ATI/AMD Extensions.

Pictures featuring: Form Designer sample project, GL Quicksearch, updated GLSL 1.3 editor

Changes in 0.5.3:

Java Applet and Webstart support
OpenGL Quicksearch
GLSL editor updated to support GLSL 1.3 (OpenGL 3.0 spec)
two new NetBeans Form Designer sample JOGL projects
NetBeans 6.5 and JDK6 are the new minimum requirements

Changes in 0.5.2 since last release:

JOGL distribution has been updated to version 1.1.1
GLSL linker now does not stop linking shaders on compiler warnings
the pack should now correctly deploy JOGL and GlueGen's native libraries on all supported platforms (64bit bug)

To download the pack, please visit the plugin portal.

As always, please use the user mailing list for feedback and the issue tracker for bug reports on the project page.

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BTW the pack recenty reached the 36k downloads milestone which makes it to the #2 in the most popular plugins category of the plugin portal ;)

NetBeans OpenGL Pack 0.5.1 released

mbien — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:31:45 +0000

The NetBeans OpenGL Pack 0.5.1 has been released. This is a small bugfix release with no major features added.

Changes since last release:

updated JOGL distribution to v1.1.1rc8
updated JOGL demos (added gears Applet demo)
added JOGL API support module for doc and source integration
webstart support for JOGL project templates (just enable it in the project properties)
improved JOGL deployment code (fixed some issues on 64bit systems)
bug fixes

To download the pack please visit the plugin portal page.

The OpenGL pack will be soon available via plugin portal update center (Tools | Plugins). This will make our old "NetBeans OpenGL Pack update center" obsolete (and improve the download speed!). However, we will use the old update center for experimental not final releases in future.

As always, please use the user mailing list for feedback and the issue tracker for bug reports on the project page.

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Write once run everywhere [1][2][3][4][5][6] - seems like the platform agnostic JOGL deployment is working ;)

Pictures of my old 3D Engine in Java

mbien — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 18:35:36 +0000

Here are some screenshots of my 3D Engine (codename Metaverse) I made a few years ago (click to enlarge). It is written in Java and uses JOGL (JSR 231) as OpenGL binding and JInput to access the controllers.

These shots show the real time lighting and water rendering capabilities. They also show that you are the whole time on a real 3D planet (codename potato ;) ).

The next shows a 'test vehicle' to test model loading, animation, physics and collision detection of the Engine. You can use this vehicle to explore the planet - it makes even a lot of fun to drive through rough terrain and try to survive jumps from steep hills ;). The other screenshot shows the planet as wireframe.

The last two show the continuous triangulation of the terrain mesh and the space subdivision into a quad-tree (used for fast frustum culling and physics). The viewer is configured to be located inside the river bed.

You think that Java for 3D Graphics is like a penguin in hell? If you follow some rules to prevent stop the world garbage collections (full GCs) and prevent calls through the JNI where possible you can reach with the server (hotspot compiler) JVM performance comparable to C++ code.

The rendering performance is quite good. Even fast fly overs are rendered with 60+ fps. If the camera stays still the renderer reaches 200+ fps on my notebook (ATI X1600).

I have currently no time to continue with this project but if I think back how fun it was to work on that engine I would love to start hacking again immediately ;).

NetBeans OpenGL Pack is evolving

mbien — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:43:21 +0000

The NetBeans OpenGL Pack is slowly evolving to a set of useful integrated tools, demo applications and editors for Java OpenGL development.

The features currently included are:

Editor for the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) with compiler error annotation, code folding, syntax highlighting, auto completion and documentation.
Easy access to the GLSL compiler and linker of your graphics driver integrated in the editor
OpenGL Capabilities Viewer
Integration of JOGL GUI components into the Matisse GUI builder
JOGL project templates
Ready to run JOGL demos and examples of the OpenGL Programming Guide (also known as Red Book)

We are currently fixing the last bugs and hope to build the first release soon. The early access version is available via Update Center in the download section of the project page.

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The project has also been recently mentioned in the NetBeans Magazine [issue four] covering NetBeans 6 features. Geertjan Wielenga interviewed me about the GLSL editor in the Schliemann section of the magazine.