A cube is rendered as a square in QGLWidget

Question

I've been trying to render a cube in a QGLWidget, but it comes out wrong. No matter how I rotate it, it looks like a flat square. It's like it didn't notice the Z coordinates of its vertices. Just before I added clearing of the GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT, the square looked like all of the cube's sides crammed into one. Now it seems to discard vertices which don't belong in the front side, but it still isn't a cube.!

Screenshots [link]

My initializeGL() and paintGL():

typedef struct
{
    float XYZW[4];
    float RGBA[4];
} Vertex;

Vertex Vertices[8] =
{
    //vertices
};

const GLubyte Indices[36] =
{
    //indices
};

void ModelView::initializeGL()
{
    m_program = new QGLShaderProgram(this);
    m_program->addShaderFromSourceCode(QGLShader::Vertex, vertexShaderSource);

    m_program->addShaderFromSourceCode(QGLShader::Fragment, fragmentShaderSource);

    m_program->link();
}

void ModelView::paintGL()
{
    glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST);
    glDepthFunc(GL_LESS);

    glClearColor(.5f, .5f, .5f, 1.0f);
    glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT);

    glViewport(0, 0, width(), height());

    m_program->bind();

    QMatrix4x4 matrix;
    matrix.perspective(60, 4.0/3.0, 0.1, 100.0);
    matrix.translate(0, 0, -2);
    matrix.rotate(50.0, 1, 1, 1);

    m_program->setUniformValue(m_matrixUniform, matrix);

    m_posAttr = m_program->attributeLocation("posAttr");
    m_colAttr = m_program->attributeLocation("colAttr");
    m_matrixUniform = m_program->uniformLocation("matrix");

    glGenBuffers(1, &BufferId);
    glGenBuffers(1, &IndexBufferId);

    glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, BufferId);
    glBindBuffer(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, IndexBufferId);

    glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, BufferSize, Vertices, GL_STATIC_DRAW);
    glBufferData(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(Indices), Indices, GL_STATIC_DRAW);

    glVertexAttribPointer(m_posAttr, 2, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, VertexSize, 0);
    glVertexAttribPointer(m_colAttr, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, VertexSize, (GLvoid *)RgbOffset);

    glEnableVertexAttribArray(0);
    glEnableVertexAttribArray(1);

    glDrawElements(GL_TRIANGLES, 36, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, NULL);

    glDisableVertexAttribArray(1);
    glDisableVertexAttribArray(0);

    m_program->release();
}

Vertices and Indices should be defined correctly, they're taken from a tutorial, as is most of the code. Rendering of 2D object seems to be just fine, though.

Also, why does the tutorial call matrix.translate with the -2 argument? If I change it to anything else greater than 1 or remove it, the rendered object disappears.

Qt5, Windows Vista 32-bit.

Answer 1

glVertexAttribPointer() has a size parameter, which specifies the number of components per vertex. In the code it is 2, therefore everything is 2D. Changing to 3 solves the issue.

Answer 2

Also, why does the tutorial call matrix.translate with the -2 argument? If I change it to anything else greater than 1 or remove it, the rendered object disappears.

This is due to clipping. When you render objects, things that are "too close" or "too far" are discarded, via the near and far clipping planes (respectively).

By moving the cube closer (changing -2 to 1 or 0), you are bringing the cube forward, past the near clipping plane, and it consequently disappears.