Re: Shadows (Yet Another Object Graphics Question)

["Karl Schultz" <kschultz(at)researchsystems.com>]

"David Fanning" <davidf@dfanning.com> wrote in message
MPG.14e0ffd2bbc1eb0b989d4e@news.frii.com">news:MPG.14e0ffd2bbc1eb0b989d4e@news.frii.com...
> Jason P. Meyers (jpm7934@cis.rit.edu) writes:
>
> > Does IDL support casting shadows caused by one object onto another, for
> > example a ball over a ground plane?  Here is what I am doing:
>
> Oh, oh. He just got WAY beyond my meager knowledge
> of objects.
>
> Cheers,
>
> David
>
> P.S. Let's just say I wish I were young again. For
> a *lot* of reasons. :-(

The short answer is that there is no magic shadow switch in object graphics.

But here is a reference that might be of help.  There is a section on
shadows in the OpenGL ("red book") Programming Guide about generating
shadows.  It involves computing a projection transform that projects your
objects onto a plane along the light direction, which is exactly what you
want.  The book tells how to come up with the matrix given the plane
equation of your ground plane and the direction vector of your light source.

You can create an object graphics model structure where you have your
objects and their "normal" transform in one model (IDLgrModel).  You would
also create an additional model whose parent is the first model, and add the
same graphic objects (sans ground plane) to it with the /ALIAS keyword, to
avoid complete duplication.  Finally you adjust the transform in the second
model using the transform derived from the red book.  The intent is to draw
the same objects twice, using a different transform each time.

I haven't actually tried it, but I think it would work and would make an
interesting project.

There is one additional problem that you may run into.  The shadow polygons
will be drawn onto the same plane as the ground plane (we are trying to do
this!), so you may get Z-buffer "fights" or stitching effects, because the
rasterizer may not generate the same Z-coords for each pixel since the plane
equations for the polygons may not be exactly the same.  If you encounter
this, I would try moving the shadow plane slightly away from the light
source so that the shadow polygons sort of float over the ground plane.  You
would use the original ground plane plane equation when computing the shadow
transform matrix, but actually draw the ground plane with a slightly
different plane equation.  If the ground plane is perpendicular to the light
source direction, then it would be a simple matter of adjusting D in the
ground plane plane equation.

Hope this helps,
Karl