Problem with glReadPixels

[Michael Breitung]

Dear OpenGl Community,

I have a strange problem with glReadPixels. Maybe you have a suggestion for me.

I was playing around with this function a bit and noticed a strange effect as soon as I display objects, which don't contain solid color. On screen they render fine but the pixels I read show strange patterns. To get closer to the source of the problem I wrote a quick and dirty demo program, which just displays one single quad and then uses glReadPixels to read all pixels of the viewport. Those I write to a tga file.

As soon as I apply a gradient to that quad I get the folowing effect. On top is a screenshot of the window, bottom are the read pixels. Its vertically mirrored since I was to lazy to change the origin before writing the tga.



If I use a solid color for the quad all works fine. Also for multiple quads. But as soon as I have a gradient it screws up the read pixels. It gets even worse if I map a texture with an uneven pattern onto the quad - which is what I eventually want to do.

#include <windows.h>
#include <gl\glew.h>
#include <gl\glut.h>
#include <gl\freeglut_ext.h>
 
#include <iostream>
#include <stdio.h>
 
//helpers
void renderScene(void)
{
  glClear    (GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT );  
 
  glBegin(GL_QUADS);
 
  glColor3f(1,0,0);
  glVertex2f(10 , 10);
  glVertex2f(10, 512 +10);
  glVertex2f(512 + 10 , 512 +10 );
 
  /** glReadPixels will work if a solid color is used on this quad,
  * so commenting out folowing line will give correct behaviour */
  glColor3f(0,1,0);
 
  glVertex2f(512 + 10  , 10);
 
  glEnd();
 
  glFlush();
}
 
void changeSize(GLsizei w, GLsizei h)
{
  glViewport(0,0,w,h);
 
  //Reset the coordinate system
  glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
  glLoadIdentity();
 
  glOrtho(0, w , 0, h , 1,-1);
 
  glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW );
  glLoadIdentity();
}
 
bool writeTGA(const std::string & filename, unsigned char * texture, unsigned int  width, unsigned int  height, unsigned int  bpp)
{
  FILE *file = fopen(filename.c_str(), "w");	
 
  if( file == NULL)
    return false;
 
  GLubyte header[] = {
    00,00,02, 00,00,00, 00,00,00, 00,00,00,
    0xff & width, 0xff & width >> 8,
    0xff & height, 0xff & height >> 8,
    bpp, 0x20 
  }; 
 
  fwrite( header, sizeof(header), 1, file);
 
  fwrite(texture, width * height * bpp / 8, 1, file);
 
  fclose(file);
 
  return true;
}
 
//main
int main(int argc, char ** argv)
{
  unsigned int windowW  = 800;
  unsigned int windowH  = 600;
  int          windowId = 0;
 
  std::cout << "ReadPixels Test" << std::endl;
  std::cout << "-----------------------------\n" << std::endl;
 
  //Setup FreeGlut
  int tmpArg = 0;
  glutInit(&tmpArg, NULL);
 
  // Note: glutSetOption is only available with freeglut
  glutSetOption(GLUT_ACTION_ON_WINDOW_CLOSE, GLUT_ACTION_GLUTMAINLOOP_RETURNS);        
  glutInitDisplayMode( GLUT_DOUBLE | GLUT_RGB);
  glutInitWindowSize(windowW, windowH);
 
  windowId = glutCreateWindow("glReadPixels Test");
 
  glutDisplayFunc(renderScene);
  glutIdleFunc(renderScene);
  glutReshapeFunc(changeSize);
 
  //setup some opengl states
  glClearColor (0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0);
  glPixelStorei(GL_PACK_ALIGNMENT, 1);   
 
  //adjust window size 
  changeSize(windowW, windowH);
 
  //main loop
  int counter = 200;
  while(counter--)
  {
    glutPostRedisplay();
 
    glutMainLoopEvent();
 
    glutSwapBuffers();
 
    if(50 == counter )
    {
      unsigned char * texture = (unsigned char *)malloc(windowW * windowH * 3);
 
      memset(texture, 0x00, windowW * windowH * 3);
 
      glPixelStorei(GL_PACK_ALIGNMENT, 1);     
      glReadPixels(0, 0, windowW , windowH, GL_BGR, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, texture);
 
      //write pixels to file
      writeTGA("testout.tga", texture, windowW, windowH,  24);
 
      free(texture);
    }
 
    Sleep(25);
  }
 
  return 0;
}

This seems like one of those problems, where I stare at my code for too long and just don't see the obvious. At least I hope it's that trivial and some of you can point me to my error. I have looked through forum and internet and this problem seems to be not very common - I found no references describing this behaviour.

Query for the gl version string returns 3.3.0 at my system . I'm using freeglut to setup the opengl window, in case you want to test that code.

I have played around with all kinds of opengl settings but I just don't seem to find the right switch here. GL_PACK_ALIGNMENT seems not the problem here, though I still set it to 1 just to make sure. I also tried to move swapBuffers behind the glReadPixels since I read it somewhere in the forum but it changes nothing.

Thanks,
Michael

[V-man]

Looks like you are using double buffering => glutInitDisplayMode( GLUT_DOUBLE | GLUT_RGB


And in renderScene you call glFlush(). I suggest you actually swap buffers with gluSwapBuffers().
You should glread the buffer before swapping.

[Michael Breitung]

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately that doesn't do it (also tested on a nother pc, just to make sure) :-( I had also tested single buffering and also changed the swapbuffer to be called after readpixels. I also had glflush removed in one version. I now tested again what you suggested: still not working. There are quite a few switches and I hope I just don't get the combination right.

PS: I now also tested this whole stuff with an offscreen framebuffer and reading back from it. Exact same behaviour. What am I missing. I'm sure this has to work somehow.

Thanks in advance.


cheers

[dukey]

my guess is you are writing to an RGBA output format, or you have the output size wrong somehow. The shifting like that makes me think you are reading 4 instead of 3 pixels.

[Michael Breitung]

Hi dukey. I also think that something goes wrong with the output format. The strange thing though, when I render solid, one color rectangles, for example, those are read exactly as they should. Only if I apply a gradient (or texture or I guess any pattern) it goes wrong. Maybe I find some other cases where it doesn't work but for now I just wanted to get the basics working. It also seems to read the pixels right until it encounters a gradient.

PS: The output format I set to unsigned byte and the color format I'm reading is set to rgb. I also tested rgba but this looks even more strange. If he was somehow reading rgba right now I'd get a crash in program since I only allocated memory space for rgb. But there are other packed formats, but those I didn't specify here.

[Michael Breitung]

I found the error. A fresh look at the code revealed a missing letter in the opening of the file for tga writing. It has to be "wb" and not "w". Quite obvious, but since I copy-pasted this part of the code and it was working for solid shapes I falsely assumed it as working. I was looking at the wrong parts of my code.

sorry for the disturbance. In the end no opengl problem with glreadpixels after all. Sometimes a good nights sleep is all it needs to find a bug :-)

cheers