Computer Graphics 2 - exercise repository

This repository contains the code which you are going to work with over the course of the CG2 exercises. It contains the CGV Framework as a submodule, so be sure to clone the repository using the --recursive flag, like so:

git clone https://bitbucket.org/cgvtud/cg2.git --recursive

If you forget adding the flag when cloning, you can run

git submodule init
git submodule update --remote

from within your local repository root later on.

Development environment

The CGV Framework is cross-platform and supports Windows and Linux (MacOS is supported in theory, but completely untested and likely to not work without adjustments). For the exercise however, only building on Windows and Visual Studio is officially supported. CMake build files are included in the exercise and you are free to develop on the OS of your choice, but due to the vast multitude of different configurations and setups, we cannot and will not provide assistance if you encounter trouble building or running on anything other than Windows.

Building the exercises

Advanced users may opt to build with CMake. An alternative approach is to use the CGV framework's own makefile generator.

Using CMake

Start by navigating to the project's directory:

cd cg2

Using Visual Studio 2022 (recommended and tested), initialize and generate the solution with:

cmake -B cmake-build -G "Visual Studio 17 2022"

For other supported versions (e.g., Visual Studio 2019), modify the generator flag appropriately:

cmake -B cmake-build -G "Visual Studio 16 2019"

Be advised that not all versions of Visual Studio are supported. Tested versions are 2022 and 2019.

Once configured, open CG2.sln in the cmake-build directory.

On the right side (in the Solution Explorer), you will see a list of projects. Right-click on the project you want to build and select 'Set as StartUp Project'. Then either press F5 or click on the green play button to build and run the project.

If you want to change the project you are working on, you can once again right-click on the project and select 'Set as StartUp Project'.

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Using builtin CGV build tool

Setting up the environment

• Navigate to the directory cgv in the repository root
• You will find several windows batch scripts which take care of the setup
• First, you have to select which of the installed Windows SDKs to use
• Hitting enter in the command prompt will choose the newest one

Generate the Visual Studio solution

• The Framework is now set up – next, we generate a VS solution for exercise 1
• For this, it’s easiest if you open two explorer windows
• one should show the folder exercise1 from the repository root
• the other the folder framework\bin
• Drag the "project file" CG2_exercise1.pj onto the batch script generate_makefiles.bat

Build the code

• If you hit any key in the previous console window, Visual Studio will open automatically.
• Otherwise, you can find your solution inside your build folder; e.g. build\vs142\CG2_exercise1 in case of Visual Studio 2019 and 32-bit builds
• Before you build the code, make sure either of the two "... Dll" configurations is selected
  • The other two build types ("Debug/Release" and "Debug/Release Exe") are for advanced usage and outside of the scope of the exercise
• Done! You can now build the solution.

Linux pointers

Prerequisites

To build the CGV Framework under Linux, several development packages related to OpenGL and low-level input device access are required. On Debian-based distributions, those are libgl1-mesa-dev libxi-dev libxinerama-dev libglut-dev (or freeglut3-dev, for the later) as well as their respective dependencies, which should get pulled in automatically.

IDE

To solve the exercise in a productive way under Linux, we do recommend using an IDE. Many current offerings (like the open source Visual Studio Code editor) support opening a CMake-enabled source tree directly. Currently, the Framework CMake build system will automatically generate launch and debug configurations for VS Code. But if you use any other IDE, you'll have to create launch/debug configs yourself. Shell scripts for launching the exercises will be created in your chosen CMake build directory, named run_CG2_exercise1.sh, run_CG2_exercise2.sh and run_CG2_exercise45.sh, respectively. You can inspect them to find out how to launch the cgv_viewer binary and provide it with the necessary command line arguments for each exercise, which you can then adapt for your IDE.