An OpenGL® drawing tool allows users to create 3D images, which can be easily manipulated. It is different from 2D drawing programs, which record pixel colors. Using OpenGL® for 2D applications can be wasteful. An OpenGL® drawing tool looks like a vector graphics program and can texture 3D surfaces. However, it may cause problems for some systems that do not support OpenGL®.
An OpenGL® drawing tool is a program designed to provide a user with the ability to create an image that is rendered using the OpenGL® graphics library and possibly hardware capabilities and acceleration. The difference between an OpenGL® drawing tool and other drawing programs is that OpenGL® is based on three-dimensional (3D) geometry, whereas most other drawing programs use flat two-dimensional (2D) surfaces. A 2D drawing program will record pixel colors, while a 3D drawing program will instead record shapes that can be easily manipulated later. There are advantages to using an OpenGL® drawing tool over some standard 2D drawing programs, but there may also be some complications that can make it difficult to use on some computer systems or unsuitable for certain applications.
In the most basic sense, any program that uses OpenGL® as an output method for rendering or displaying the interface and canvas is technically an OpenGL® painting tool. There are ways the program can be fully 2D oriented, simply by changing a texture map to a flat rectangle the same size as the viewing area to allow for painting. Using OpenGL® for this type of application, however, can be wasteful because many workarounds will need to be developed to subvert the graphics library’s natural 3D bias.
Most commonly, an OpenGL® drawing tool looks a lot like a vector graphics program. This means that when a user draws a line, circle or doodle on the program’s canvas, it is recorded as a geometric shape rather than a collection of pixels. Once the geometry of a shape is defined, it becomes incredibly easy to modify just that single object independently of the rest of the painted image. In 2D programs, this can be difficult because pixel information can be ambiguous and some areas can take time to isolate and then manipulate.
Another powerful use of an OpenGL® drawing tool is to texture, or paint, a 3D surface or mesh. This involves showing a 3D object as a series of connected triangles, called triangle meshes, and then allowing a user to paint on the surface of the object. This is useful for 3D artists because, once the surface is painted, an image file can be produced and saved so that the object can be texture mapped in real time in a 3D program, application, or game. The reason this is needed in some cases is because the flat image of the 2D texture will look unpredictably distorted when it’s not wrapped around the 3D object.
Using OpenGL® as a way to view a program may cause problems for some systems. Not all graphics cards support OpenGL® and some have performance issues with drivers. There are also systems that only emulate OpenGL® rendering, which means that the software is actually doing the processing instead of a graphics card, causing it to render very slowly.
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