Function-Plot: Sample OpenGL program

Before we sit down to writing code we have to set up our environment. You can download the glut library from here. Alternatively you can use the Dev C++ IDE's Package Manager to download it. For those who use Dev C++ you can go to Tools>Check for Updates/Packages and download glut from there.
After you successfully finish downloading you can start a new glut project by clicking File>New>Project and selecting the Multimedia tab and selecting glut as your project type.
You will instantly see a sample glut program. Just to get a taste of what you can accomplish, try running it. Select Execute>Compile and Run or press F9.

Now lets jump straight to out own glut project. Our objective is to plot a simple two dimensional sine curve on the screen. This will help to familiarize you to the opengl programming. Try running this program. I will elaborately explain the code in the following lines.


#include
#include<stdlib.h>
#include<math.h>


void Init(void)
{
glClearColor(0.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f); // choose a color to clear the screen with
glColor3f(1.0f,1.0f,1.0f); // choose a fill color
glPointSize(1.0f);
glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
glLoadIdentity();
gluOrtho2D(0.0,640.0,0.0,480.0); // set up the co-ordinate system
}


void funcPlot(void)
{
glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);
GLdouble x,y;
glBegin(GL_LINES); // Start drawing lines
glVertex2i(0,240); // Draw a vertex( a point,well almost) at (0,240) world co-ordinates
glVertex2i(640,240);
glEnd(); // end drawing

glBegin(GL_POINTS); // begin drawing points
for(x=0.0;x<8.0;x+=0.005)>

y = (480/2)+ (10 * sin(x));

glEnd(); // end drawing

}




int main(int args,char** argv)

{

glutInit(&args,argv);

glutInitWindowPosition(0,0);

glutInitWindowSize(640,480);

glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_SINGLE | GLUT_RGBA);

glutCreateWindow("Function Plot Example");

glutDisplayFunc(funcPlot);

glutMainLoop();

return(0);

}

To take you through this I prefer to start with the main() function. The function glutInit() is called to start a new new thread and create a new window instance to run your program. The function calls that follow, set the various properties of your rendering context and your window instance. The beauty of glut is that you need'nt worry about creating your window handles and managing your contexts, glut does it all for you. The internal implementation of glut is such that these tasks are performed for you depending on your native window system. Hence the platform independancy. The glutInitDisplayMode() call defines your rendering context. The parameters passed to it ie. GLUT_SINGLE | GLUT_RGB, denote that you need a single display buffer and your color mode is RGB or Red, Green and Blue. It will be clear further what they excatly mean but for now think of the display buffer as a contigious memory block where you're rendered scene will be temporarily stored before it is pushed into the display. The color mode needs further explaination. As you know white light comprises of all colors. But a colored light is characterized by the absence of certain components, coherently it can also be said that colored light is rather a combination of various color components in specific proportions. Thus RGB is color mode is a method in which every color is denoted as a combination of Red, Green and Blue. The next three lines are self explainatory. glutInitWindowSize() specifies the size or resolution of your window in (pixel width) x (pixel height). glutInitWindowPosition() is used to postion your window relative to the screen co-ordinate system. The screen co-ordinate system is defined in two dimensions. The top left corner of your screen is considered the origin (0,0) and x and y co-ordinates increase as we move towards the right and downward respectively. Finally glutCreateWindow() creates your window with the title specified as the parameter. The next section is where you register your call back functions. Call back functions in simple terms are functions that are called when a specific event occurs. For instance, a screen resize operation gives rise to a resize event(I will introduce this later). To handle this event we implement a function that is to be called every time a resize event occurs. Then to let glut know that this is the function to be called for such an event, we register it. In the next line we see that the the display call back is registered. The init() function that is called next is where you setup the canvas for you to draw on. The glClearColor() specifies the color that you want to clear your screen with, everytime you redraw the scene. The first three values are the Red, Green and Blue components of your color and the fourth value is alpha(leave this for now). The glColor3f() function chooses your drawing color. The next few lines are better understood later so for now think of this operation as setting up your world co-ordinate system. The display call back that we registered in main is implemented as shown. I believe most of you will have no difficulty understanding it and for now the comments in the code should suffice.