Create a Chrome cube in OpenGL / Glut?

Question

I'm attempting to make a chromed cube in GLUT / OpenGL and I'm not sure exactly how to do it.

I looked up a "Materials Table" in a textbook which showed "Chrome" as being: Ambient: (0.25, 0.25, 0.25), Diffuse: (0.4, 0.4, 0.4), and Specular: (0.774597,0.774597,0.774597).

My question is, how do I create a simple cube and apply this material/texture to it in Glut/OpenGL?

Do I use "glutSolidCube()"? If so, how do I then apply the chrome texture to it?

Can any GLUT/OpenGL people point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

This should be as simple as calling glMaterialfv() before glutSolidCube().

I haven't done OpenGL since school, but here's some display loop code from an old project that used a sphere that should get you on the right track:

_Ambient[CHROME][0] = 0.25f;
_Ambient[CHROME][1] = 0.25f;
_Ambient[CHROME][2] = 0.25f;
_Ambient[CHROME][3] = 1.0f;
_Diffuse[CHROME][0] = 0.4f;
_Diffuse[CHROME][1] = 0.4f;
_Diffuse[CHROME][2] = 0.4f;
_Diffuse[CHROME][3] = 1.0f;
_Specular[CHROME][0] = 0.774597f;
_Specular[CHROME][1] = 0.774597f;
_Specular[CHROME][2] = 0.774597f;
_Specular[CHROME][3] = 1.0f;
_Shininess[CHROME] = 76.8f;


void Display()
{
  glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT);

  glPushMatrix();
    glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_AMBIENT, _Ambient[CHROME]);
    glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_DIFFUSE, _Diffuse[CHROME]);
    glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_SPECULAR, _Specular[CHROME]);
    glMaterialf(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_SHININESS, _Shininess[CHROME]);
    // Translations...
    glutSolidSphere(_Radius, _Slices, _Stacks);
  glPopMatrix();

  glFlush();

  glutSwapBuffers();
}

Answer 2

Have you looked at environment mapping? You want your object to reflect light from other objects in the environment, so you basically apply a texture that looks like the environment and generate texture coordinates based on normals. This will give the surface a mirrored appearance. You can have OpenGL automatically generate texture coordinates for each vertex based with glTexGen.

NeHe tutorial 23 covers this with sphere mapping. You can also generate your own texture coordinates per-vertex or per-pixel using GLSL. Here's a tutorial on that.