Limited interaction when using selection with QGLViewer Viewer3D stream mechanism

Table of Contents

• Giving names to graphical objects
• Assigning reactions or callback functions
• Writing a reaction or callback function

This part of the manual describes how to select objects in 3D scenes when using a Viewer3D object. The principle is to handle one or several reactions or callback functions to the viewer. They are then called when the user selects an object in a 3d scene displayed in the viewer. Selection with QGLViewer is usually done with a shift + left click on the object of interest. The "name" of the clicked object is then given as parameter to the reaction/callback function, so that further processing taking into account the selected object is made possible. By default the selected elements are highlighted (in dark or light color depending of the original color element).

Actually the elements which can be selected interactively are the following:

Element type	list type	can be selected
Surfel (Quad3D)	std::map	YES
Voxel (Cube3D)	std::map	YES
Line (LineD3D)	std::vector	NO
Point (BallD3D)	std::vector	NO
Triangles (TriangleD3D)	std::vector	NO
Polygon (PolygonD3D)	std::vector	NO

Author

Jacques-Olivier Lachaud

Bertrand Kerautret

Related examples: viewer3D-10-interaction.cpp

Note

This functionality is not really useful for developing a full interactive 3D application. It is for now limited to surfel and voxel selection, with simple visual feedback. However, this functionality is rather easy to use, hence may be found useful when prototyping.

Giving names to graphical objects

An OpenGL name is an integer that can be affected to a graphical object or list. Here, if you put in a viewer stream a SetName3D object, then objects outputed afterwards are given this name. Assuming that you have a vector of surfels (cells of dimension 2), and you want to assign a different name to each surfel, you may proceed as follows when displaying them.

Viewer3D<> viewer( K ); // K is some KhalimskySpaceND
std::vector<SCell> v;   // fill it with surfels
...
int name = 0;
for ( std::vector<SCell>::const_iterator it = v.begin(), itE = v.end(); it != itE; ++it )
  viewer << SetName3D( name++ ) << *it;

Now, all surfels have a different name. Note that if you wish some objects to be unselectable, you may precise a negative (-1) name.

Assigning reactions or callback functions

A reaction or callback function for a selection in a QGLViewer window has the following signature:

int reaction( void* viewer, int32_t name, void* data );

You may assign one reaction for a given interval of names. You may thus group together some graphical objects by assigning different reactions to different groups. This is again done using the stream mechanism with an object SetSelectCallback3D. You may also precise a pointer to some object with a lifetime at least as long as the calls to the reaction. This is a way of giving information to the reaction or callback function.

viewer << SetSelectCallback3D( reaction,  &data, 0, v.size() - 1 );

Here, we have set the same reaction for all surfels (names between 0 and v.size()-1).

Writing a reaction or callback function

As said above, a reaction or callback function to a QGLViewer selection event must have the following prototype:

int reaction( void* viewer, int32_t name, void* data );

It receives as input a pointer viewer to the viewer object on which the selection was performed, the OpenGL name of the selected graphical object, and a pointer data to the data that was provided at creation of the reaction or callback function. Generally, in the object pointed by data, one stores a way to convert the name into some logical 3d object, like a surfel. If we go on with our example, we could proceed as follows:

int myReaction( void* viewer, int32_t name, void* data )
{
  std::vector<SCell>* ptrV = (std::vector<SCell>*) data;
  cout << "Surfel " << (*ptrV)[ name ] << " selected." << endl;
  return 0;
}
...
QApplication app( argc, argv );
Viewer3D<> viewer( K ); // K is some KhalimskySpaceND
std::vector<SCell> v;   // fill it with surfels
...
int name = 0;
for ( std::vector<SCell>::const_iterator it = v.begin(), itE = v.end(); it != itE; ++it )
  viewer << SetName3D( name++ ) << *it;
viewer << SetSelectCallback3D( myReaction,  &v, 0, v.size() - 1 );
viewer << Viewer3D<>::updateDisplay;
return app.exec();

You may have a look at viewer3D-10-interaction.cpp for another example.