Question

I’ve been looking at the new OpenGL framework for iOS, aptly named GLKit, and have been playing around with porting some existing OpenGL 1.0 code to OpenGL ES 2.0 just to dip my toe in the water and get to grips with things.

After reading the API and a whole ream of other best practices provided by Apple and the OpenGL documentation, i’ve had it pretty much ingrained into me that I should be using Vertex Buffer Objects and using “elements” or rather, vertex indices. There seems to be a lot of mention of optimising memory storage by using padding where necessary too but that’s a conversation for another day perhaps 😉

I read on SO a while ago about the benefits of using NSMutableData over classic malloc/free and wanted to try and take this approach when writing my VBO. So far i’ve managed to bungle together a snippet that looks like i’m heading down the right track but i’m not entirely sure about how much data a VBO should contain. Here’s what i’ve got so far:

//import headers
#import <GLKit/GLKit.h>

#pragma mark -
#pragma mark InterleavingVertexData

//vertex buffer object struct
struct InterleavingVertexData
{
    //vertices
    GLKVector3 vertices;

    //normals
    GLKVector3 normal;

    //color
    GLKVector4 color;

    //texture coordinates
    GLKVector2 texture;
};
typedef struct InterleavingVertexData InterleavingVertexData;

#pragma mark -
#pragma mark VertexIndices

//vertex indices struct
struct VertexIndices
{
    //vertex indices
    GLuint a;
    GLuint b;
    GLuint c;
};
typedef struct VertexIndices VertexIndices;

//create and return a vertex index with specified indices
static inline VertexIndices VertexIndicesMake(GLuint a, GLuint b, GLuint c)
{
    //declare vertex indices
    VertexIndices vertexIndices;

    //set indices
    vertexIndices.a = a;
    vertexIndices.b = b;
    vertexIndices.c = c;

    //return vertex indices
    return vertexIndices;
}

#pragma mark -
#pragma mark VertexBuffer

//vertex buffer struct
struct VertexBuffer
{
    //vertex data
    NSMutableData *vertexData;

    //vertex indices
    NSMutableData *indices;

    //total number of vertices
    NSUInteger totalVertices;

    //total number of indices
    NSUInteger totalIndices;
};
typedef struct VertexBuffer VertexBuffer;

//create and return a vertex buffer with allocated data
static inline VertexBuffer VertexBufferMake(NSUInteger totalVertices, NSUInteger totalIndices)
{
    //declare vertex buffer
    VertexBuffer vertexBuffer;

    //set vertices and indices count
    vertexBuffer.totalVertices = totalVertices;
    vertexBuffer.totalIndices = totalIndices;

    //set vertex data and indices
    vertexBuffer.vertexData = nil;
    vertexBuffer.indices = nil;

    //check vertices count
    if(totalVertices > 0)
    {
        //allocate data
        vertexBuffer.vertexData = [[NSMutableData alloc] initWithLength:(sizeof(InterleavingVertexData) * totalVertices)];
    }

    //check indices count
    if(totalIndices > 0)
    {
        //allocate data
        vertexBuffer.indices = [[NSMutableData alloc] initWithLength:(sizeof(VertexIndices) * totalIndices)];
    }

    //return vertex buffer
    return vertexBuffer;
}

//grow or shrink a vertex buffer
static inline void VertexBufferResize(VertexBuffer *vertexBuffer, NSUInteger totalVertices, NSUInteger totalIndices)
{
    //check adjusted vertices count
    if(vertexBuffer->totalVertices != totalVertices && totalVertices > 0)
    {
        //set vertices count
        vertexBuffer->totalVertices = totalVertices;

        //check data is valid
        if(vertexBuffer->vertexData)
        {
            //allocate data
            [vertexBuffer->vertexData setLength:(sizeof(InterleavingVertexData) * totalVertices)];
        }
        else
        {
            //allocate data
            vertexBuffer->vertexData = [[NSMutableData alloc] initWithLength:(sizeof(InterleavingVertexData) * totalVertices)];
        }
    }

    //check adjusted indices count
    if(vertexBuffer->totalIndices != totalIndices && totalIndices > 0)
    {
        //set indices count
        vertexBuffer->totalIndices = totalIndices;

        //check data is valid
        if(vertexBuffer->indices)
        {
            //allocate data
            [vertexBuffer->indices setLength:(sizeof(VertexIndices) * totalIndices)];
        }
        else
        {
            //allocate data
            vertexBuffer->indices = [[NSMutableData alloc] initWithLength:(sizeof(VertexIndices) * totalIndices)];
        }
    }
}

//release vertex buffer data
static inline void VertexBufferRelease(VertexBuffer *vertexBuffer)
{
    //set vertices and indices count
    vertexBuffer->totalVertices = 0;
    vertexBuffer->totalIndices = 0;

    //check vertices are valid
    if(vertexBuffer->vertexData)
    {
        //clean up
        [vertexBuffer->vertexData release];
        vertexBuffer->vertexData = nil;
    }

    //check indices are valid
    if(vertexBuffer->indices)
    {
        //clean up
        [vertexBuffer->indices release];
        vertexBuffer->indices = nil;
    }
}

Currently, the interleaving vertex data contains enough to store the vertices, normals, colors and texture coordinates for each vertex. I was under the impression that there would be an equal number of vertices and indices but in practice this obviously isn’t the case so for this reason, the indices are part of the VBO rather than the InterleavingVertexData.

Question Updated:

I’ve updated the code above after managing to wrangle it into a working state. Hopefully it will come in useful to someone in the future.

Now that i’ve managed to set everything up, i’m having trouble getting the expected results from rendering the content bound to the VBO. Here’s the code i’ve got so far for loading my data into OpenGL:

//generate buffers
glGenBuffers(2, buffers);

//bind vertices buffer
glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, buffers[0]);
glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, (sizeof(InterleavingVertexData) * vertexBuffer.totalVertices), self.vertexData, GL_STATIC_DRAW);

//bind indices buffer
glBindBuffer(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, buffers[1]);
glBufferData(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, (sizeof(VertexIndices) * vertexBuffer.totalIndices), self.vertexIndices, GL_STATIC_DRAW);

//reset buffers
glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, 0);
glBindBuffer(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, 0);

And the code for rendering everything:

//enable required attributes
glEnableVertexAttribArray(GLKVertexAttribPosition);
glEnableVertexAttribArray(GLKVertexAttribNormal);
glEnableVertexAttribArray(GLKVertexAttribColor);
glEnableVertexAttribArray(GLKVertexAttribTexCoord0);

//bind buffers
glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, buffers[0]);
glBindBuffer(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, buffers[1]);

//set shape attributes
glVertexAttribPointer(GLKVertexAttribPosition, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, sizeof(InterleavingVertexData), (void *)offsetof(InterleavingVertexData, vertices));
glVertexAttribPointer(GLKVertexAttribNormal, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_TRUE, sizeof(InterleavingVertexData), (void *)offsetof(InterleavingVertexData, normal));
glVertexAttribPointer(GLKVertexAttribColor, 4, GL_FLOAT, GL_TRUE, sizeof(InterleavingVertexData), (void *)offsetof(InterleavingVertexData, color));
glVertexAttribPointer(GLKVertexAttribTexCoord0, 2, GL_FLOAT, GL_TRUE, sizeof(InterleavingVertexData), (void *)offsetof(InterleavingVertexData, texture));

//draw shape
glDrawElements(GL_TRIANGLES, vertexBuffer.totalIndices, GL_UNSIGNED_INT, (void *)0);

//reset buffers
glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, 0);
glBindBuffer(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, 0);

//disable atttributes
glDisableVertexAttribArray(GLKVertexAttribTexCoord0);
glDisableVertexAttribArray(GLKVertexAttribColor);
glDisableVertexAttribArray(GLKVertexAttribNormal);
glDisableVertexAttribArray(GLKVertexAttribPosition);

Whilst my iPhone hasn’t yet exploded with awesome graphics of unicorns shooting rainbows from their eyes, I haven’t been able to render a simple shape in it’s entirety without tearing my hair out.

From the rendering it looks as though only 1/3rd of each shape is being drawn, perhaps 1/2 depending on the viewing angle. It seems the culprit it the count parameter passed to glDrawElements as fiddling with this has differing results but I’ve read the documentation and checked the value over and over again and it does indeed expect the total number of indices (which is what i’m passing currently).

As I mentioned in my original question, i’m quite confused by VBO’s currently or rather, confused by the implementation rather than the concept at least. If anyone would be so kind as to cast an eye over my implementation, that would be super awesome as i’m sure i’ve made a rookie error somewhere along the way but you know how it is when you stare at something for hours on end with no progress.

Thanks for reading!

Answer 1

I think I see your problem.

You’ve got a struct, VertexIndices which contains three indices, or the indices for one triangle. When you bind your IBO (Index Buffer Object, the buffer object containing your indices), you do this:

glBufferData(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, (sizeof(VertexIndices) * vertexBuffer.totalIndices), self.vertexIndices, GL_STATIC_DRAW);

Which is fine. The size parameter in glBufferData is in bytes so you’re multiplying sizeof(3 floats) by the number of groups of 3 floats that you have. Great.

But then when you actually call glDrawElements, you do this:

glDrawElements(GL_TRIANGLES, vertexBuffer.totalIndices, GL_UNSIGNED_INT, (void *)0);

However, the vertexBuffer.totalIndices is equal to the number of VertexIndices structs you’ve got, which is equal to the total number of indices / 3 (or total number of triangles). So you need to do one of the following:

1. Easy fix yet stupid: glDrawElements(..., vertexBuffer.totalIndices * 3, ...);
2. Proper yet more work: vertexBuffer.totalIndices should contain the actual total number of indices that you’ve got, not the total number of triangles you’re rendering.

You need to do one of these because right now totalIndices contains the total number VertexIndices you’ve got, and each one has 3 indices. The right thing to do here is either rename totalIndices to totalTriangles, or keep track of the actual total number of indices somewhere.