Spiral cloud/galaxy rendering using opengl / glsl

A small part of one of my projects in real-time graphics course at DTU. It shows how multi-texturing and blending using shaders in OpenGL can be used to create cool effects like these, a fast spinning "spiral galaxy" and a beam. It's not pre-rendered, it runs in real-time on an opengl rendering engine i'm working on. Also, since all the geometry needed are 3 quads (not including the skybox), it has a very low impact on frame rate.

The engine is a C++/Python hybrid using Boost::Python, more info: http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/visiondag/VD08/posters/pdf/Visionday08-3Dmusic.pdf

Captured with Fraps
Skybox texture from EVE-Online

P.s. don't dis the lousy touchpad-camerawork :)

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• galaxy
• spiral
• GLSL
• opengl
• gl
• boost
• python
• c++
• shaders
• eve-online
• virtual
• reality
• realtime-graphics

[fantasymaster89]

nice effects!

are you using a skybox for that kind of neon-like blue horizon?

[edvaldig]

Thanks :) Yes that's a skybox, In another demo I had a kind of a ground which I faded out in the distance so the skybox gave a foggy effects, looked even better then so It's really a nice skybox texture

[jjramone13]

Very pretty. However you could probably achieve the same effect with simple blending. Unless you really had a need to generate a galaxy during run-time, a pre-rendered one is fine. No need to bring glsl in to it, but it is indeed a nice effect.

[edvaldig]

Thank you :) Well the final result is made of 4 textures, all mapped on each of the quads. 2 for some coloring and complexity, 1 for alpha blending and the last one for making the lightning effect look electric (an electricity-looking alpha map). It really gave the whole effect nice fake depth so it seemed to be made out of complex "clouds". The low resolution of this video dampens that effect so it appears only to be a simple flashing of intensity values. Nice additive blending demo btw!

[bertmsk]

It's an amazing! Can you share source? ;)

[masternerdguy]

what code did you use to render the skybox?

[dawoof]

can you share the Shader FIle?

[zamliman]

Wow thats simply amazing

[droleniacoc]

Could you put some pink floyd music in the background please?

[DienVoong]

Man that was some terrible camerawork.

[fantasymaster89]

cool idea...indeed.

is there a link where i can download this texture?

[jjramone13]

Thanks. =}