Strange rendering behavior with transparent texture in WebGL - webgl

I've been writing a little planet generator using Haxe + Away3D, and deploying to HTML5/WebGL. But I'm having a strange issue when rendering my clouds. I have the planet mesh, and then the clouds mesh slightly bigger in the same position.
I'm using a perlin noise function to generate the planetary features and the cloud formations, writing them to a bitmap and applying the bitmap as the texture. Now, strangely, when I deploy this to iOS or C++/OSX, it renders exactly how I wanted it to:
Now, when I deploy to WebGL, it generates an identical diffuse map, but renders as:
(The above was at a much lower resolution, due to how often I was reloading the page. The problem persisted at higher resolutions.)
The clouds are there, and the edges look alright, wispy and translucent. But the inside is opaque and seemingly being rendered differently (each pixel is the same color, only the alpha channel is changed)
I realize this is likely something to do with how the code is ultimately compiled/generated in haxe, but I'm hoping it's something simple like a render setting or blending mode I'm not setting. But since I'm not even sure exactly what is happening, I wouldn't know where to look.
Here's the diffuse map being produced. I overlaid it on red so the clouds would be viewable.

Bitmapdata.perlinNoise does not work on html5.
You should implement it by yourself, or you could use pre-rendered image.
public function perlinNoise (baseX:Float, baseY:Float, numOctaves:UInt, randomSeed:Int, stitch:Bool, fractalNoise:Bool, channelOptions:UInt = 7, grayScale:Bool = false, offsets:Array = null):Void {
openfl.Lib.notImplemented ("BitmapData.perlinNoise");
}
https://github.com/openfl/openfl/blob/c072a98a3c6699f4d334dacd783be947db9cf63a/openfl/display/BitmapData.hx
Also, WebGL-Inspector is very useful for debugging WebGL apps. Have you used it?
http://benvanik.github.io/WebGL-Inspector/

Well, then, did you upload that image from ByteArray?
Lime once allowed access ByteArray with array index operator, even though it shouldn't on js. This is fixed in the lastest version of Lime to avoid mistakes.
I used __get and __set method instead of [] to access a byte array.
Away3d itself might be the cause of this issue too, because the code of backend is generated from different source files depending on the target you use.
For example, byteArrayOffset parameter of Texture.uploadFromByteArray is supported on html5, but not on native.
If away3d is the cause of the problem, which part of the code is causing the problem? I'm not sure for now.
EDIT: I've also experienced a problem with OpenFL's latest WebGL backend. I think legacy OpenFL doesn't have this problem. OpenFL's sprite renderer was changing colorMask (and possibly other OpenGL render states) without my knowledge! This problem occured because my code and OpenFL's sprite renderer was actually using the same OpenGL context. I got rid of this problem by manually disabling OpenFL's sprite renderer.

Related

Best approach for coding a painting app on iOS / iPad

I’m trying to build a drawing/painting app for the iPad, with textured brush tips and paper.
So far, all drawing app example codes I've come across seem to work by stroking a path. However, I'd like to actually apply a texture all along the path, to simulate say, an oil brush, or charcoal.
Here is an example of a brush tip texture: Bursh tip
The result when painting with the same brush tip: Result
In the results, the top output is what it looks like when the "brush tip" texture is applied far apart along the path.
The bottom result is the texture applied with very small steps along the path. Those who've worked in Photoshop with custom brushes will find this familiar.
I had once prototyped this in Processing years ago (I've since lost the source code), and got it to work in real-time.
In Processing, I converted both the brush tip PNG and the canvas (or the image I'm painting on to) into an array of integers. Then, I simply copied the values from the brush tip to the canvas texture, at the appropriate index. At the end of the cycle, I displayed the image, for that time-step. Repeat this dozens of times in-between each point returned by the mouse.
How would I approach this in iOS, and in real-time? I tried this (https://blog.avenuecode.com/how-to-use-uikit-for-low-level-image-processing-in-swift) but it's way too slow.
This makes me believe Metal might be the only way forward. Is that true, or am complicating this unnecessarily?
Thank you for any guidance!
PS. I'm coding in Swift 5, targeting iOS 13, in Xcode 11.5.
Welcome!
I recommend you check out Core Image. It's Apple's framework for image processing (on a higher level than Metal, though it can integrate with Metal). Unfortunately, the documentation is a bit out-dated, but I'm sure you can translate it into Swift.
Here Apple describes how you would realize a painting app with Core Image and here you can download the corresponding sample project.

iOS - Displaying text with OpenGL ES 2.0

I'm surprisingly struggling a lot to display text with OpenGL ES 2.0. There are a ton of posts on stackoverflow, debating the subject, showing a few lines of code, or showing links from 2010 but working with OpenGL ES 1.x (not compatible).
But they are quite vague, and to my knowledge there is not complete code or convenient way to display text with version 2.
Do you know if there is a modern way to display text ? Like just adding a pod and writing something like this ?
[font drawText:#"This is a text" size:#12];
Thanks a lot in advance, any help would be very much liked.
EDIT 1 : I have to use OpenGL 2.0, and I can't use something else, for internal reasons.
EDIT 2 : I've found two libraries that do it :
FTGLES : It crashes at runtime when I try to use it
https://github.com/chandl34/public/tree/master/personal/c%2B%2B/Font
This one is simple but written for ES1, so I need to port the code to ES2.
EDIT 3 : ES1 and ES2 are different : ES2 works with shaders.
Since you are targeting ES2 and shaders are supported it might be a bit hard to create a tool that does this for you. But if you find such a tool it might be conflicted with your flow in many ways such as binding its own shaders and buffers, using settings on blending, depth buffer... Then if it would do that you are having trouble as you may not have a good control over how and where the text is drawn (on a 3D rotating box for instance).
But from your question (it's snippet) it seems more like all you want to do is add some 2D overlay with text which would look exactly like using an UILabel. If this is the case then I suggest you to actually use UILabel to draw these texts. You can add all of these views easily on your view that shows openGL content.
In the other case where you still need to draw text on a 3D object and want to do it very easily I suggest you to still use UILabel but create its screenshot and push it to a new (or atlas) texture. Then you can draw it as any other object. UILabel will then handle all fonts, alignments, colors, multiline and text wrapping, font size adjustments... So if you already have a system to draw a texture in the scene you should not be too far from creating yourself a tool that draws some text on the screen since you use a texture to transfer the data.
Nothing has changed since OpenGL ES1. Usually text is displayed in planar projection and created quads that are textured using font texture. There are many tutorials on this topic.
One example how to do it.
However, this is quite a lot of work when you started from scratch.
There might be better way, but depending on what you plan to do might not be suitable. You may mix UIKit with OpenGL view, having text drawn with UIKit as overlay. (UILabel, UIButton..etc.)

Stage3D iOS Antialiasing on AIR 24

With AIR 24 release we are able to set anti aliasing on Stage3D now, but there are some issues with it. Can anybody help how to use it in right way without changing entire project code ?
The issue I have is that anti alias works great, and no more jagged edges, but there are rendering issues and I guess some texture normals are being inverted, also when using Occlusion Material there are some jagged material shadows...
Next thing I notice is when drawing Wireframe Globe with Lines Segments - the lines are visible on the globe all the time, no matter if you add some object in front or not.
So, intersecting line segments with other materials don't work at all, and lines are on the screen forever.
Please, help if you find any trick fixing the issues.
Thanks
Just to add some more information: the issue seems to happen when shareContext = true. Without Starling there is antialiasing and the lineSegments are rendered at the current depth. It would be interesting to see if it works with other sharedContext besides Starling to isolate the issue. If I find an answer I will come back and post it. It would be nice to get this working. Any idea the performance hit on mobile of having a second instance of away3d? Layering that way might be a dirty work around.
*****EDIT****
AntiAliasing on the line Segments only occurs with sharedContext. View3D class does not seem to have it's antiAlias value set anywhere and when I forced it to a value of 2, all hell broke loose.
Edit#2
Mesh appears above line segments, Sprite3D do not.

Unity 5 iOS font distortion issue

SOLVED:
Before handling the Video RGBA Data and pushing it to the texture, I was setting the Unpack Alignment to 4. glPixelStorei(GL_UNPACK_ALIGNMENT, 4);
Simply discarding this, or setting back to 1after handling the video frame memory fixes the issue.
glPixelStorei(GL_UNPACK_ALIGNMENT, 1);
- END UPDATE -
*Update: This only happens when I am uploading a texture to a mesh. This is being done with opengl es 2.0. That mesh is in 3d space though obviously, and does not overlap the 2d UI text even after the 2d and 3d are composed together. Merely disabling the plane mesh entirely fixes this. Any indication as to why, or how to fix this would be greatly appreciated.
Original Post:
I would appreciate any insight as to why the font looks so odd in the image below and how to fix it. This does not happen in editor, only on device.
I have tried every suggestion that I have seen out there. The script from http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/900663/why-are-my-unity-ui-fonts-rendering-incorrectly.html for instance, as well as rebuilding the font with a much smaller subset of characters, as someone suggests the font atlas is getting full and dropping glyphs to make room for dynamic character changes.
Here is an image:
This DOES NOT happen when the text is already entered. Only after a field is updated such as a score change or the like. I have tried both 32 and 64 bit builds, and it happens on new and old ipads. I have also tried multiple fonts, including Arial.

WebGL with CocoonJS - Duplicate triangle

I have a very simple test code which draws a moving triangle. In Chrome it works fine, however on an Android 4.1 Device with the CocoonJS 1.4.1 launcher (which funnels work to OpenGL ES 2.0) a random effect pops in:
The triangle is drawn, but quite often also a bit translated triangle is also drawn (more exactly, the extra triangle seems to be a replica of a formerly drawn one, but the distance is not consistently the same). The tri needs to be moved with some minimal speed for the effect to show (or maybe the replica is just hidden if moving is slow). The tint of the replica seems to be a bit different (even though the fragment shader color is constant), but it might be some alpha magic.
Other CocoonJS WebGL demos work fine on the device, however they don't exhibit fast movement. OpenGL benchmarks run fine.
Drawing multiple triangles has the same effect. Even though gl.Clear is used, it seems like part of some previous buffer shines through. Have you seen anything similar? Any ideas?
Thank you so much for your report, this is a known bug and we are working to solve this issue.
btw, by changing the setInverval time to this one: setInterval(loop, 16); should solve the problem temporarily.

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