Lessons 11 - 15

Lesson11 screenshot

Flag Effect (Waving Texture)

This tutorial code brought to you by Bosco. The same guy that created the totally cool mini demo called worthless. He enjoyed everyones reaction to his demo, and decided to go one step further and explain how he does the cool effect at the end of his demo. This tutorial builds on the code from lesson 6. By the end of the tutorial you should be able to bend fold and manipulate textures of your own. It's definitely a nice effect, and alot better than flat non moving textures. If you enjoy the tutorial, please email bosco and let him know.

Lesson12 Screenshot

Display Lists

Want to know how to speed up you OpenGL programs? Tired of writing lots of code every time you want to put an object on the screen? If so, this tutorial is definitely for you. Learn how to use OpenGL display lists. Prebuild objects and display them on the screen with just one line of code. Speed up your programs by using precompiled objects in your programs. Stop writing the same code over and over. Let display lists do all the work for you! In this tutorial we'll build the Q-Bert pyramids using just a few lines of code thanks to display lists.

Lesson 13 Screenshot

Bitmap Fonts

I think the question I get asked most often in email is "how can I display text on the screen using OpenGL?". You could always texture map text onto your screen. Of course you have very little control over the text, and unless you're good at blending, the text usually ends up mixing with the images on the screen. If you'd like an easy way to write the text you want anywhere you want on the screen in any color you want, using any of your computers built in fonts, then this tutorial is definitely for you. Bitmaps font's are 2D scalable fonts, they can not be rotated. They always face forward.

Lesson 14 Screenshot

Outline Fonts

Bitmap fonts not good enough? Do you need control over where the fonts are on the Z axis? Do you need 3D fonts (fonts with actual depth)? Do you need wireframe fonts? If so, Outline fonts are the perfect solution. You can move them along the Z axis, and they resize. You can spin them around on an axis (something you can't do with bitmap fonts), and because proper normals are generated for each character, they can be lit up with lighting. You can build Outline fonts using any of the fonts installed on your computer. Definitely a nice font to use in games and demos.

Lesson 15 Screenshot

Texture Mapped Outline Fonts

Hopefully my last font tutorial {grin}. This time we learn a quick and fairly nice looking way to texture map fonts, and any other 3D object on your screen. By playing around with the code, you can create some pretty cool special effects, Everything from normal texture mapped object to sphere mapped objects. In case you don't know... Sphere mapping creates a metalic looking object that reflects anything from a pattern to a picture.