Assignment 4: Using the Stencil Buffer & GPU

The goal of this assignment is to become familiar with both classic graphics hardware (the stencil buffer) and the modern GPU (using programmable geometry & pixel shaders).

GRADING NOTE:

The basic tasks for this homework will be worth 20 points total, with additional points available for extra credit. The first part (on the stencil buffer) is worth 10 points. The curve for the assignment will be about half that of previous assignments (~8.5&up=A, ~7&up=B).

Alternatively, instead of doing this homework, students may submit a detailed final project status report. This report should be a solid first draft of the final report, in the specified format, having the same outline, and containing the same information. This should be an substantial writeup, though some sections of the report will be incomplete since the work is ongoing. This status report will be graded and substituted for the 4th homework assignment, 5 points for writing quality (organization, clarity, spelling, grammar) and 5 points for overall progress on the task list. Note: The expectation is that students choosing this option will have a higher quality final project & report because they have spent extra time on it and received additional feedback.

Tasks

First, download and compile the provided files. The basic program will load an .obj into a scene. An appropriately sized quad that represents the floor is placed beneath the object and an appropriately sized quad that represent the mirror is placed to the left of the object. A yellow point above the object represents the position of a point light source. Pressing 'a' will toggle animation of this light, moving it in a circle above the object. Pressing the space bar will move the light one step along this path.
```
./hardware -input bunny_1k.obj
```
Press 'm' to toggle stencil buffer mirror rendering, which is incomplete. You need to write code to "duplicate" and render the geometry of the mirrored object and floor as they appear to exist, reflected in the mirror. Pressing 'r' will toggle a visualization of the reflected geometries, rendered in blue. If everything is working with your stencil buffer, the mirror visualization should then work as shown in the picture below. The objects in the mirror are tinted slightly blue for effect.

If you study the resulting imagery closely, you'll notice that the lighting is decidedly incorrect. The bunny in the mirror has different local shading than the physical bunny. Which light source should that bunny be lit by? For extra credit, describe the problem in your README.txt file and improve the local shading on the mirrored bunny. (Actually, the lighting on the physical bunny is wrong too and can be improved!)
Next, let's implement shadow volumes. The first step is to determine the silhouette edges in the model. These are edges that have one neighboring triangle facing toward the light source, the other triangle facing away from the light source. Pressing 'e' will toggle the visualization of these edges in red, as shown below. You need to write the code to determine which edges are silhouettes and render this geometry.
Once these edges are found, we can construct the polygons that form the "sides" of the shadow volumes. These polygons are extrusions of the silhouette edges away from the light source, towards infinity. Pressing 'p' will toggle the visualization of these polygons in green, as shown below, using blending so you can partially see through these polygons and see the depth complexity of the multiple layers of shadow volume polygons. You need to write the code to construct and render these polygons.
The last step is to do the multi-step rendering to create the shadows. This involves juggling the frame buffer, depth buffer, and stencil buffer. The basic idea is to first render the scene without lighting. Then, we do a special rendering pass of the shadow volume polygons: everywhere the depth buffer passes, we will increment (if the shadow volume polygon faces toward the camera) or decrement (if the shadow volume polygon faces away from the camera) the stencil buffer. Finally, we render the scene a second time with the lights on, but only where the stencil buffer is zero. The shadow rendering mode is toggled by pressing 's'.
An excellent stencil buffer tutorial written by Mark Kilgard at NVIDIA: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/Stencil_Buffer_Tutorial.html gives more detail on each step of the method.
There are several extensions to the basic shadow volumes code that you can do for extra credit, including: handle non-closed objects, improve the efficiency of the method, make the shadow volumes and mirror rendering methods work together (the same shadows should appear in the physical scene and the mirror), or implement "Z-fail" shadow volumes so that the rendering is correct when the camera is inside of a shadow volume (create a new scene to demonstrate this extension). Describe any extensions you make in your README.txt file.
Part 2: GPU (10 points), coming soon.

Provided Files (hw4_files.zip)

Basic Code (argparser.h, bag.h, boundingbox.h, boundingbox.cpp, camera.h, camera.cpp, glCanvas.h, glCanvas.cpp, main.cpp, matrix.h, matrix.cpp, utils.h, vectors.h, Makefile)
Similar to the previous assignments.
Half-Edge Quad Mesh Data Structure (edge.h, edge.cpp, mesh.h, mesh.cpp, triangle.h, vertex.h)
Similar to the triangle half-edge data structure you implemented in assignment 1.
Rendering (render.cpp)
The code for rendering the mesh with stencil buffer tricks.
Test meshes (bunny_200.obj, bunny_1k.obj, bunny_40k.obj)

Please read the Homework information page again before submitting.