I need to write a basic tool for exploring some point-cloud data. Not sure if OpenGL is the best choice or if I should go with something higher-level so I’m open to suggestions. I’ve worked through some basic tutorials for rending a triangle and individual data-points. I’ve been able to get the viewport to translate while rendering but I’m having trouble finding a good reference for implementing camera rotation (or point-cloud rotation, either works for me).
My requirements are:
- Load/parse a point cloud of 3D coordinates from a textfile (easy enough)
- Render point-cloud
- Allow rotation, zooming and panning of camera around point-cloud (like how the mouse operates in a CAD application)
I have searched for tutorials on camera rotation; most of them reference a function called gluLookAt which seems to be deprecated. From what I can tell, the GLM library is necessary now to implement rotation or other transformations. Is this correct?
Is there anything like a slightly-higher-level library on top of OpenGL that would help with my requirements? I would think that the style of mouse-based camera movement I’m looking for is a common requirement, and likely included in some package already. I’ve used this package to get started:
So it’s possible the Glitter project already includes the functionality I’m looking for, but I’m not sure which library it might be in or the best approach.