Rendering to a non-rectangular window

[dpoon]

Hi all,

I've recently been looking into using OpenGL with the Win32 Layered Windows API. The intended effect is for the scene to look like it is being renderer
directly to the desktop or to an transparent overlay on top of all other windows on the desktop. I also wanted to preserve the per fragment alpha for the rendered scene so that the scene would blend seemlessly with the background - in this case the desktop windows.

I've uploaded the results (with source and VC2005 solution files) to my website: www.dhpoware.com (http://www.dhpoware.com)

The demo is called "OpenGL Layered Windows Demo" and can be found in the demos section.

Any feedback will be most welcomed.

Thanks.
dpoon.

[twxs]

hi, i am aslo exploring the layered/OpenGL possibility under windows.
my test app is a 3D mp3 player available here : http://nmartin.free.fr/perso/index.php?go=glAmp
this is a french website but non-french speaker should find the download section.
The window can be rotated with the right mouse button.

[dpoon]

twxs: Nice demo! Would be good if the playback controls were animated so that when you press one of these buttons you see the buttons being pressed as well.

[twxs]

thks, all objects can be animated (like the repeat button) but i work on a "generic" solution to describe how animate the mesh in a separated configuration file. The main goal is to use any 3DS scene as skin (the turtle skin in the screenshots section)

i've looked to your code and I don't use a pbuffer to grab de opengl bufer but I directly render the openGL scene into a bitmap (using PFD_DRAW_TO_BITMAP to create the GLRC). I will try with the pbuffer to compare the 2 methods.