Deferred shading and light volumes

[Dark Photon]

...
    glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_DEPTH24_STENCIL8, dim[0], dim[1], 0,
            GL_DEPTH_STENCIL, GL_UNSIGNED_INT_24_8, NULL);

...I'm confused about the GL_UNSIGNED_INT_24_8. The depth texture sampling gives us a value between 0..1 yet the format is unsigned int. So how is this supposed to work? Does the shader internally converts the unsigned int to float when sampling with texture()?

The format and type args are just used when you provide texel data as input via the last arg. You provided NULL, so in practice they don't matter.

Internally the DEPTH24_STENCIL8 internal format is a 32-bit fixed-point format where 24-bits are fixed-point depth (0..2^24-1) and 8-bits are fixed-point stencil (0..2^8-1). How you end up with 0..1 depth values is that 0..24^-1 is mapped to 0..1 when the pipeline operates on it.

[Dark Photon]

It seems that some floor and ceiling fragments covering the part of the sphere hat reaches below the floor/ceiling failed the stencil test. This is especially strange since it depends on the viewpount. How can I fix that?

Not sure from a glance exactly what the problem is. Make sure that the eyepoint isn't inside the light source volume (or more correctly, ensure that no part of the near clip plane clips away part of the light source volume).

This is in practice similar to shadow volume boundary counting with stencil shadows where you need a special case for when the eyepoint is inside a shadow volume (or more correctly, the near clip plane clips away any shadow volume face.

[saski]

Hello,

I'm still struggeling with the light volume artifacts described in my last post. stupid question: Why is the light volume only being culled by the depth-test? This seems to be the problem with my code.
screenshot below shows that the sphere is still completely visible even when there are objects (wall on the right side) between the sphere and the viewpoint. The lightvolume produced by the stencil test is still a 3D object, right?


So what do I have to do to enable z-culling for the light volume?

here are the code snippets:

Render geometry to FBO:

    glBindFramebuffer(GL_DRAW_FRAMEBUFFER, ids[framebuffer]);
    GLenum buffers[] = {GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0, GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT1};
    glDrawBuffers(2, buffers); // attach albedo and normal/specular buffer to FBO
  // geometry pass updates the depth buffer
  SubSys_Set3DMode();
    SubSys_SetViewport(SubSys_GetVideoResolution());
    glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST);
    glDepthMask(GL_TRUE); // enable depth buffer for writing
    glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT);
    // set depth buffer range from 0..1
    glDepthRange(0, 1);
    // disable blending
    glDisable(GL_ALPHA_TEST);
    glDisable(GL_BLEND);
    glDisable(GL_SAMPLE_ALPHA_TO_COVERAGE);
    // set camera position
  SubSys_LookAt(eye, dir);
  // enable backface culling
  glEnable(GL_CULL_FACE);
    glCullFace(GL_BACK);
  SubSys_EnableShaderStage(shader_fillMRT, false);
    DR_Draw(dr_geometry, 0xffff); // populate geometry to gbuffer
  SubSys_DisableShaderStage();
  glDisable(GL_CULL_FACE);
  glDepthMask(GL_FALSE); // make depth buffer readonly
  glDisable(GL_DEPTH_TEST);

Render the sphere in the stencil pass:

 SubSys_EnableShaderStage(shader_null, false);
        glDrawBuffer(GL_NONE); // detach MRTs from FBO
        glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); // we definately want to use the depth buffer
        glDisable(GL_CULL_FACE); // no culling during stencil pass!
      glEnable(GL_STENCIL_TEST);
      glStencilMask(0xff);
        glClear(GL_STENCIL_BUFFER_BIT); // clear stencil buffer
        glStencilFunc(GL_ALWAYS, 0, 0); // preset buffer to all-pass
        // increment stencil if we enter/leave a polyon on its backside
        glStencilOpSeparate(GL_BACK, GL_KEEP, GL_INCR, GL_KEEP);
        // decrement stencil if we enter/leave a polyon on its frontside
        glStencilOpSeparate(GL_FRONT, GL_KEEP, GL_DECR, GL_KEEP);
        GLS_Sphere();
        glDisable(GL_DEPTH_TEST);
  SubSys_DisableShaderStage();

// bind the target buffer to write stencil/color into

 // bind new target colorbuffer
  glBindFramebuffer(GL_DRAW_FRAMEBUFFER, ids[framebuffer]);
  glDrawBuffer(GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT2); // attach auxiliary color buffer
  glClearColor(0,0,1,1); // set fallback color for non touched fragments
  glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); // set buffer color

And the light pass:

 // ******************* light pass *******************
  // activate MRTs
    glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE0); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, ids[colorbuffer]);
    glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE1); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, ids[normalbuffer]);
    glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE2); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, ids[depthbuffer]);
  SubSys_EnableShaderStage(shader_deferred, true);
        glStencilFunc(GL_NOTEQUAL, 0, 0xFF); // pass all stencil values > 1
        glEnable(GL_CULL_FACE); // enable culling
        glCullFace(GL_FRONT);
        GLS_Sphere();
        glCullFace(GL_BACK);
        glDisable(GL_BLEND);
        glDisable(GL_STENCIL_TEST);    // disable stencil
  SubSys_DisableShaderStage();
  // disable MRT TMUs
  glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE2); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0);
    glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE1); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0);
    glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE0); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0);

blit FBO to screen

    glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); // reset projection
    glLoadIdentity();
    glBindFramebuffer(GL_DRAW_FRAMEBUFFER, 0);
  glBindFramebuffer(GL_READ_FRAMEBUFFER, ids[framebuffer]);
  glReadBuffer(GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT2);
  int16* sdim = SubSys_GetVideoResolution();
  glBlitFramebuffer(0, 0, sdim[0], sdim[1], 0, 0, sdim[0], sdim[1],
          GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT, GL_LINEAR);

[saski]

Never mind! Found the solution. It is always a good Idea to watch the stencil buffer ranges when incrementing/decrementing

Doing:

   glStencilOpSeparate(GL_FRONT, GL_KEEP, GL_DECR_WRAP, GL_KEEP);
   glStencilOpSeparate(GL_BACK, GL_KEEP, GL_INCR_WRAP, GL_KEEP);

instead of:

   glStencilOpSeparate(GL_FRONT, GL_KEEP, GL_DECR, GL_KEEP);
   glStencilOpSeparate(GL_BACK, GL_KEEP, GL_INCR, GL_KEEP);

did the trick.

Best regards
Saski