Week 5

Researching GUIs
After spending days researching GUIs, I decided on working with Qt. Of all the GUI that supported OpenGL rendering, this seems to be the most popular choice. Ken had informed me of an open-source version for MSVS and I have tried working with both the open-source and the professional version. I am currently having problems linking it with my version of MSVS. Once I can start using Qt, I can be able to transform the application using a different concept by removing the OOPGL GUI tree with the new interface.

I finally got Qt to link with MSVS. The first step is to research and learn its capabilities by going through their tutorials. Going through tutorials on couple websites, I feel more confident in using Qt as my primary GUI source. I replaced my current GLUT hierarchical GUI system with a GL widget that takes the place of my render class and a Window, which takes place of most of the main callbacks and GUI layouts.

GUI Progress
The first transition into the new GUI system is to allow mouse and keyboard inputs for camera movements. This was performed nicely because the GL widget has event handlers that can easily pick up the mouse and keyboard signals. The next step is to re-create the primary features that were in my original GUI. The GUI now supports a menu bar with two buttons: Config and Exit. The config menu option opens up a dialog box, which allows the user to set several GL states, such as enabling lights, textures, and culling. This replaces the bottom panel of the old version. The next step is to design a light listener. I feel I should start with a similar concept of my previous one by implementing the light listener on the right hand side. Future versions will open a light listener dialog box.

Weekly Notes
Project-specific sections:

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