I need to load a 3D model (.3ds file) in my QGLWidget (Qt OpenGL widget).
I am looking for a cross-platform solution working under Linux, Windows and Mac.
I have found some solutions on the web, but still have not been able to integrate any of them work in my Qt application:
Assimp: it is not cross-platform and does not support .3ds models
(http://assimp.sourceforge.net/)
Qt3D: it is cross-platform and seeems to be the right choice for OpenGL widgets. Unfortunatelly, I still have not find the way to use it.
(https://github.com/qtproject/qt3d)
Qt Quick: it uses QML files instead of QT widgets.
3ds Loader: http://www.spacesimulator.net/wiki/index.php?title=Tutorials:3ds_Loader
Any suggestion?
You can use Qt3D. It adds 3D content to Qt Quick's cross-platform ability. Apps can be 2D QML applications with a small amount of simple 3D content; through to complex 3D scenes, containing 3D assets - such as complex 3D models, and shader effects.
Qt3D supports 2D and 3D rendering in both Qt/C++ and Qt Quick applications.
You can also load a model object in 3D Studio Max (3DS) format or other standard formats like obj with a perspective camera view using Qt3D.
There are some good tutorials and examples here.
Assimp is written in C++ and used cross-platform in several projects including the Qt Project itself.
The .3ds format seems to be supported eventually unless you use a very old version where it was not added. See the documentation for further details about it:
Common interchange formats
Note the following entry at the top:
3ds Max 3DS ( .3ds )
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Since Qt can handle in normal way OpenGL, it is cross-platform, can handle mouse, keyboard, gamepad etc. What are the disadvantages of using Qt with OpenGL instead using OpenGL with extensions?
What are the disadvantages of using Qt with OpenGL instead using OpenGL with extensions?
Your question is malformed. Nothing stops you from using Qt with OpenGL and with OpenGL extensions.
You can use Qt to manage the OpenGL window, while using direct OpenGL commands with extension to render. You are not required to use Qt's OpenGL interface to render in an OpenGL window.
Qt does not provide "additional opengl functionality." It cannot provide "additional opengl functionality." It isn't part of OpenGL, so it can't make OpenGL features magically appear.
There are no OpenGL extensions for mouse, keyboard, gamepad, or any of the other things Qt handles. Qt's windowing functionality and OpenGL extensions are two completely different things. And they are completely orthogonal; nothing stops you from using Qt+OpenGL and OpenGL extensions at the same time.
Well, unless you stop yourself. See, Qt has this OpenGL abstraction layer. This is a set of wrapper classes around OpenGL: QtOpenGLShaderProgram, QtOpenGLVertexArrayObject, and the like. If you use that, you don't directly make OpenGL calls; you make Qt calls that make OpenGL calls for you.
If your question is whether to use Qt+OpenGL directly vs. using Qt's OpenGL abstraction layer, that's a different matter.
The first problem is that Qt's abstraction layer is bound to OpenGL ES 2.0. While it occasionally offers features that ES 2.0 can't do, it is primarily intended as a class-ified implementation of ES 2.0. So by using ES 2.0, you're effectively giving up using lots of desktop OpenGL features.
Not "extensions"; core features.
For example, you cannot use integers for vertex attributes with Qt's abstraction. The QtOpenGLShaderProgram class doesn't allow it. All of its setAttributeBuffer calls assume that you're calling glVertexAttribPointer. It has no mechanism for calling glVertexAttribIPointer. And that has been core desktop OpenGL for nearly a decade.
Note that this is just one feature. Other things Qt doesn't have wrapper class support that are part of core desktop OpenGL (this is not a comprehensive list):
Separate programs
Sampler objects
Separate attribute formats
These are not bleeding-edge hardware features; most of them have been around for half a decade.
QtOpenGLFunctions is similarly limited to OpenGL ES versions. That leaves plenty of non-extension desktop GL stuff on the table that cannot be used through their abstraction.
Also, because Qt's abstraction is around ES 2.0, it doesn't care about core OpenGL contexts. For example, it still has non-buffered vertex attributes (setAttributeArray). That's not legal in core OpenGL, and again hasn't been legal for nearly a decade.
So if you want to actually use core desktop OpenGL functionality, the Qt abstraction layer is out.
Then, there are places where Qt's abstraction just doesn't match how OpenGL works.
For example (and this is a personal pet-peeve of mine), QtOpenGLBufferObject is typed. That is, the binding type is part of the object. This is not how buffer objects work!
OpenGL buffer objects aren't typed. It is perfectly legal to perform an asynchronous glReadPixels into a buffer, then bind the same buffer for use as vertex data. That's not possible with Qt's class abstraction. And it's not like this is something specific to desktop GL; OpenGL ES works the same way.
Similarly, for reasons best known to themselves, they put the vertex attribute specification functions (the equivalent to glVertexAttribPointer) in QtOpenGLShaderProgram. Why are they there? While vertex attributes do have an indirect connection to a program, they're not a direct part of the conceptual program interface. OpenGL doesn't work like that.
So those are the biggest problems with Qt's abstraction layer. If you can live within those restrictions, feel free to use it. For people making desktop OpenGL applications, they may be too restrictive.
You (OP) wrote in a comment to a different answer:
Extensions provide functionality that the core of OpenGL doesn't provide when Qt itself won't be created for providing additional opengl functionality. It was like a addon for users.
I think you completely misunderstood what OpenGL extensions are and how they work. OpenGL extensions allow to add new features to OpenGL (which might actually be included into a later core version) and/or to expose vendor specific functionality like access to special GPU functions present only for a very specific narrow range of GPUs.
Qt on the other hand offers a framework for applications that deals with operating system specifics in a portable way. Qt and OpenGL are completely orthogonal to each other and nothing, that OpenGL extensions do in any way resembles what Qt does. Qt has a OpenGL integration module, that – among other things – will also load OpenGL extensions if you ask it to; but that doesn't make it a "Qt" thing.
I think you are missing the point. OpenGL (including its extensions that provide some perks that the plain OpenGL does not) is "just" a graphics library intended for rendering 2D and 3D. Qt on the other hand is much more. OpenGL in itself doesn't provide anything but rendering. You can't even create a window (as what you are used to in Windows/Linux) with it. In order to add any sort of handling of the user's input you need an extra layer which Qt (and many other similar frameworks) provides - integration into the window manager of the OS, handling of mouse and keyboard events etc. Qt does also support the OpenGL extensions so you don't have to throw these away if you want to use them.
Whether you need Qt for your OpenGL (with or without the extensions your system supports) tasks or not is something you need to decide for yourself. Qt does offer many nice features that will help you make your OpenGL interaction great however it is a huge overhead and depending on your target system you may have to use a smaller framework with a smaller memory (incl. persistent storage for all the library files) footprint and CPU usage. Other popular choices are GLFW, freeglut and SDL/SDL2 all of which provide at least the basics (window creation and mouse/keyboard handling) to get your application up and running.
QML as per my knowledge does the same thing as OpenGL, right? So can I completely replace OpenGLwith QML ?
Whats the basic difference between QML and OpenGL?
When does people prefer QML over OpenGL and vice versa?
Your knowledge is incorrect, QML and OpenGL are two completely different things, the first is a declarative language the second is a graphics API.
QtQuick which uses QML usually uses OpenGL for its graphics, but that's a back-end you don't have any access to (it actually got a little more accessible in the recent releases but I expect not many people will go into tweaking that, and even if they did, it would be in C++, not QML).
There is Qt3D, which has a QML API, but it is just some basic stuff and it is high level - by no means a substitute to OpenGL which is very low level. That means it will be much easier to put some 3D models, cameras, materials and such with Qt3D, things you'd normally not do in OpenGL directly, but with an API built on top of OpenGL.
I'm using QWebEngine to display some webpages. Unfortunately it uses OpenGL internally - which leads to a crash on some graphics adapters (one can see the driver-DLL as the reason for the crash easily). As a second caveat it is not possible to catch this crash by a try-catch-block.
So my question: how can one force QWebEngine to use software rendering only and to not to use OpenGL?
Thanks!
I assume you're on Windows, and are using the official Qt binaries, and are using Qt 5.5 or newer. These allow to switch between Desktop OpenGL, ANGLE (Direct X) and software rasterization at runime.
It should be therefore enough to set the QT_OPENGL environment variable to either "angle" (to use the DirectX backend) or "desktop". To hardcode this you can set the Qt::AA_UseOpenGLES or Qt::AA_UseSoftwareOpenGL application attributes.
If you use WebEngine through Qt Quick, you can also use the Qt Quick 2D renderer.
Qt is involved here so I want to know which 3D models does Qt support when it works with OpenGL?
Is there a list somewhere of the 3D model formats supported by Qt?
which 3D models does openGL support when it works with Qt?
None and everything!
There's nothing "special" when using OpenGL in a Qt application. The QtOpenGL wrappers are just convenience functions that help with context and function pointer management.
OpenGL by itself has no(!) support for 3D models whatsoever. It just draws points, lines and triangles by the programmers commands. The programmer (you) is programming a general purpose computing machine and thereby you can read and draw the contents of whatever 3D model format you're able to write a parser and OpenGL drawing code for; and by the virtue of running on general purpose hardware this is: Every 3D model format.
Of course it puts the burden on you to actually program it. That there is Qt involved does not matter at all.
I have an application written in in Java 3D. As Java 3D is now virtually dead I am thinking about converting the code to JavaFX (JavaFX 8 supports 3D objects).
The question is whether it is relatively simple to convert Java 3D code to Java FX code?
Are there straightforward counterparts of Java 3D methods in JavaFX or would it be more like a total redesign of the code?
Here is a little list of packages used in the Java 3D code:
javax.media.j3d.Alpha;
javax.media.j3d.Appearance;
javax.media.j3d.Behavior;
javax.media.j3d.BoundingSphere;
javax.media.j3d.BranchGroup;
javax.media.j3d.Canvas3D;
javax.media.j3d.GeometryArray;
javax.media.j3d.LineArray;
javax.media.j3d.PointLight;
javax.media.j3d.Shape3D;
javax.media.j3d.Switch;
javax.media.j3d.Transform3D;
javax.media.j3d.TransformGroup;
javax.media.j3d.WakeupOnElapsedFrames;
javax.media.j3d.WakeupOnElapsedTime;
javax.vecmath.Matrix4f;
javax.vecmath.Vector3d;
javax.vecmath.Vector3f;
Java 3D isn't dead, you're completely wrong as you can see here. There is a wide choice of scenegraph APIs more capable than JavaFX 3D API which is particularly poor in my humble opinion.
I don't know what gouessej is saying about Java 3D not being dead, there will not be feature development for Java3D going forward.
However he/she is correct that the base JavaFX 3D API is very lacking in features.
If you want to port your application to JavaFX 3D, you will have to rewrite the rendering portions to match the new JavaFX API. From the list that you provided only PointLight and Shape3D have DIRECT counterparts. Alpha transparency is an undocumented unsupported feature as of 8u40 that will get compiled into the official build for Java 9. The F(X)yz team has a demo of it working just fine but we had to recompile the platform from sources ;-).
You are not alone though, there is now free open source third party support via F(X)yz: (shameless plug....)
http://www.fxyz3d.org