Assignments » PA3: Textures

Constant textures

Create a derived class ConstantTexture : public Texture which has a member variable Color3f color; and whose value(...) function just returns it. Make a constructor that takes a const json &j and tries to assign the parameter named "color" to your color member variable by using j.value("color", color);. We put both our class definition and implementation into the file src/textures/constant.cpp.

Retrofitting the parser

To make this work with the rest of darts, we need to refactor our code a bit so that Materials use Textures instead of Color3fs, and so that it plays nice with our JSON parser.

We first need to inform our JSON parser how to create each type of texture, and what type string (e.g. "constant") to look for when creating it. Calling the following macro at the bottom of src/textures/constant.cpp will do this for the new ConstantTexture:

DARTS_REGISTER_CLASS_IN_FACTORY(Texture, ConstantTexture, "constant")

Now, change all the Color3f members of your Materials to Textures, e.g. Color3f albedo; in Lambertian becomes shared_ptr<const Texture> albedo;. You'll also need to change the corresponding constructors of any Material to call DartsFactory::create() instead of reading a color directly from the passed json object, e.g. this:

albedo = j.value("albedo", albedo);

becomes:

albedo      = DartsFactory<Texture>::create(j.at("albedo"));

DartsFactory::create() will look for a "type" field in the passed-in json object, and create the appropriate Texture subclass. This works because of the DARTS_REGISTER_CLASS_IN_FACTORY macro we called earlier.

You'll also want to support texturing the Metal::roughness parameter. This is currently a float, but you can still turn it into a Texture, and when calling its value(...) function, just convert to a scalar using the luminance() function in darts/math.h. An alternative approach would have been to treat color and grayscale textures separately, or allow roughness to differ across the three color channels, but we'll stick with the simpler approach.

Once you have this implemented, you should be able to render the scene scenes/assignment3/constant-cornell-box.json. This scene looks similar to the Cornell box from the previous assignment, except all albedos are now specified with a constant texture.

Backwards scene compatibility

One nuisance with our current solution is that we would have to re-write all our previous scene files (that directly specified a color) to instead use a "constant" texture. Previously we could have simply written:

"albedo": [0.8, 1.0, 0.3],

in the scene file, but now we have to write the more clunky:

"albedo":
{
    "type": "constant",
    "color": [0.8, 1.0, 0.3]
}

Let's add backwards compatibility so that the scene can specify colors directly too.

Take a look at DartsFactory::create() in darts/factory.h. Recall that this method of our DartsFactory is responsible for creating instances of materials, surfaces, etc. (determined by the base class T) by checking for a "type" field in the passed-in json object. We'd like the factory to do something a bit more sophisticated when we try to create a subclass of Texture.

To do that, we'll need to create a specialization of the DartsFactory::create() method that is used specifically when the template type is a Texture. Create a method in factory.h with the following signature (just below the current DartsFactory::create() implementation):

template <>
inline shared_ptr<Texture> DartsFactory<Texture>::create(const json &j)
{
    // your code here
}

Start by copying over the implementation of the generic DartsFactory::create() method.

To allow backwards compatibility, you can inspect the const json &j by calling j.is_object(), j.is_array() or j.is_number(). If j is an object, you can proceed just as in the generic implementation to construct the appropriate Texture. However, if j is an array or number, you should create a ConstantTexture directly. You can do this by calling BaseFactory::create_instance("constant", ...). Note that you may also need to modify your ConstantTexture constructor.

Once you have this implemented, you should be able to render all the scenes from the previous assignment. Give it a try.

Checkerboard

Add a CheckerTexture class following the description in Section 4.3 of the book, but adapted to the darts framework. Your constructor should look for fields named "odd" and "even" and use those together with DartsFactory<Texture>::create() to create the corresponding odd and even textures. Make sure to register the new texture with the factory using the DARTS_REGISTER_CLASS_IN_FACTORY macro like before, but this time associate it with the type string "checker".

Once you have this implemented, you should be able to render the scene scenes/assignment3/checker.json producing an image like the one shown here.

Perlin noise

Read Chapter 5 of the book and then implement Perlin noise. Also implement the noise_texture class from the book, but call this MarbleTexture instead. Allow the JSON scene file to specify the scale member variable of your MarbleTexture, and instead of always interpolating between black and white as in the book, allow the user to specify these two colors in the JSON scene file just like we did with "odd" and "even" for the checkerboard. Look for the named fields "veins" and "base" in the JSON object for this purpose. Make sure to register the texture with the DartsFactory and add your Perlin and MarbleTexture file to your CMakeLists.txt.

Render scenes/assignment3/marble.json.

Transforming texture lookups (optional)

Particularly with procedural textures, you might find it useful to be able to scale, rotate, and otherwise transform how the textures are placed on your surfaces. A simple way to accomplish is to add the Transform xform; member variable directly to the Texture base class. This way, you can transform the lookup point (hit.p) by xform in a Texture's value(const HitInfo & hit) method. You can read this in from the json object in the Texture base class constructor Texture::Texture(const json & j), but make sure to only look for it if j.is_object() == true. This allows our shorthand for specifying constant colors directly as json arrays to continue working. The PBR book discusses a more full-featured way to handle such mappings.

The ImageTexture class

Read Chapter 6 of the book and implement image texturing mapping. We already provide you with image loading support, which you should leverage using the Image3f class defined in include/darts/image.h and src/image.cpp. Your ImageTexture class should accept a "filename" string parameter from the json object. Once you read this string, use the global file resolver to resolve this filename into a path, like so:

string path = get_file_resolver().resolve(filename).str();

get_file_resolver() is defined in darts/common.h.

Texture coordinates

Extend your Sphere::intersect() function to output the UV coordinates as described in the book. Since there are many different conventions for spherical coordinates and uv coordinates, we already provide handy functions to consistently perform the Cartesian-to-spherical or spherical-to-Cartesian coordinate mappings for you. They are direction_to_spherical_coordinates() and spherical_coordinates_to_direction() in include/darts/spherical.h. You should now be able to render scenes/assignment3/earth.json.

Next, extend your Quad::intersect() function to output UV coordinates. Render scenes/assignment3/textured-box.json. 

Finally, extend single_triangle_intersect() to output UV coordinates. The function already receives three parameters (t0, t1, and t2) that specify the UV texture coordinates at the three triangle vertices. As with the normals, if the mesh doesn't provide per-vertex UV coordinates Triangle::intersect() passes nullptrs for the t0, t1, and t2 parameters and you'll need to fall back to some reasonable default. In this case, you should just store the barycentric coordinates in place of interpolated UV coordinates in hit.uv.

If you render scenes/02/triangles_textures/teapot.json you should see a scene with a teapot mesh that has texture coordinates and a texture applied, as shown below.