🎥 OpenGL Mathematics (glm) for C

Documentation

Almost all functions (inline versions) and parameters are documented inside the corresponding headers.
Complete documentation: http://cglm.readthedocs.io

Note for previous versions:

• _dup (duplicate) is changed to _copy. For instance glm_vec_dup -> glm_vec3_copy
• OpenGL related functions are dropped to make this lib platform/third-party independent
• make sure you have latest version and feel free to report bugs, troubles
• [bugfix] euler angles was implemented in reverse order (extrinsic) it was fixed, now they are intrinsic. Make sure that you have the latest version
• [major change] by starting v0.4.0, quaternions are stored as [x, y, z, w], it was [w, x, y, z] in v0.3.5 and earlier versions
• [api rename] by starting v0.4.5, glm_simd functions are renamed to glmm_
• [new option] by starting v0.4.5, you can disable alignment requirement, check options in docs.
• [major change] by starting v0.5.0, vec3 functions use glm_vec3_ namespace, it was glm_vec_ until v0.5.0
• [major change] by starting v0.5.1, built-in alignment is removed from vec3 and mat3 types

Note for C++ developers:

If you are not aware of the original GLM library yet, you may also want to look at: https://github.com/g-truc/glm

Note for new comers (Important):

• vec4 and mat4 variables must be aligned. (There will be unaligned versions later)
• in and [in, out] parameters must be initialized (please). But [out] parameters not, initializing out param is also redundant
• All functions are inline if you don't want to use pre-compiled versions with glmc_ prefix, you can ignore build process. Just incliude headers.
• if your debugger takes you to cglm headers then make sure you are not trying to copy vec4 to vec3 or alig issues...
• Welcome!

Note for experienced developers:

• Since I'm testing this library in my projects, sometimes bugs occurs; finding that bug[s] and making improvements would be more easy with multiple developer/contributor and their projects or knowledge. Consider to make some tests if you suspect something is wrong and any feedbacks, contributions and bug reports are always welcome.

Allocations?

cglm doesn't alloc any memory on heap. So it doesn't provide any allocator. You should alloc memory for out parameters too if you pass pointer of memory location. Don't forget that vec4 (also quat/versor) and mat4 must be aligned (16-bytes), because cglm uses SIMD instructions to optimize most operations if available.

Returning vector or matrix... ?

cglm supports both ARRAY API and STRUCT API, so you can return structs if you utilize struct api (glms_).

Other APIs like Vulkan, Metal, Dx?

Currently cglm uses default clip space configuration (-1, 1) for camera functions (perspective, extract corners...), in the future other clip space configurations will be supported

---

Like some other graphics libraries (especially OpenGL) this library use Column-Major layout to keep matrices in the memory.   In the future the library may support an option to use row-major layout, CURRENTLY if you need to row-major layout you will need to transpose it.

Features

• array api and struct api, you can use arrays or structs.
• general purpose matrix operations (mat4, mat3)
• chain matrix multiplication (square only)
• general purpose vector operations (cross, dot, rotate, proj, angle...)
• affine transformations
• matrix decomposition (extract rotation, scaling factor)
• optimized affine transform matrices (mul, rigid-body inverse)
• camera (lookat)
• projections (ortho, perspective)
• quaternions
• euler angles / yaw-pitch-roll to matrix
• extract euler angles
• inline or pre-compiled function call
• frustum (extract view frustum planes, corners...)
• bounding box (AABB in Frustum (culling), crop, merge...)
• bounding sphere
• project, unproject
• easing functions
• curves
• curve interpolation helpers (SMC, deCasteljau...)
• and others...

---

You have two option to call a function/operation: inline or library call (link) Almost all functions are marked inline (always_inline) so compiler will probably inline. To call pre-compiled version, just use glmc_ (c stands for 'call') instead of glm_.

  #include <cglm/cglm.h>   /* for inline */
  #include <cglm/call.h>   /* for library call (this also includes cglm.h) */

  mat4 rot, trans, rt;
  /* ... */
  glm_mul(trans, rot, rt);  /* inline */
  glmc_mul(trans, rot, rt); /* call from library */

Most of math functions are optimized manualy with SSE2 if available, if not? Dont worry there are non-sse versions of all operations

You can pass matrices and vectors as array to functions rather than get address.

  mat4 m = {
    1, 0, 0, 0,
    0, 1, 0, 0,
    0, 0, 1, 0,
    0, 0, 0, 1
  };

  glm_translate(m, (vec3){1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f});

Library contains general purpose mat4 mul and inverse functions, and also contains some special forms (optimized) of these functions for affine transformations' matrices. If you want to multiply two affine transformation matrices you can use glm_mul instead of glm_mat4_mul and glm_inv_tr (ROT + TR) instead glm_mat4_inv

/* multiplication */
mat4 modelMat;
glm_mul(T, R, modelMat);

/* othonormal rot + tr matrix inverse (rigid-body) */
glm_inv_tr(modelMat);

Build

Unix (Autotools)

$ sh ./build-deps.sh # run only once (dependencies) [Optional].
$ # You can pass this step if you don't want to run `make check` for tests.
$ # cglm uses cmocka for tests and it may reqiure cmake for building it
$
$ sh autogen.sh
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make check # [Optional] (if you run `sh ./build-deps.sh`)
$ [sudo] make install

This will also install pkg-config files so you can use pkg-config --cflags cglm and pkg-config --libs cglm to retrieve compiler and linker flags.

The files will be installed into the given prefix (usually /usr/local by default on Linux), but your pkg-config may not be configured to actually check there. You can figure out where it's looking by running pkg-config --variable pc_path pkg-config and change the path the files are installed to via ./configure --with-pkgconfigdir=/your/path. Alternatively, you can add the prefix path to your PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable.

Windows (MSBuild)

Windows related build file and project files are located in win folder, make sure you are inside cglm/win folder. Code Analysis is enabled, so it may take awhile to build.

$ cd win
$ .\build.bat

if msbuild won't work (because of multi version VS) then try to build with devenv:

$ devenv cglm.sln /Build Release

Building Docs

First you need install Sphinx: http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/installation.html then:

$ cd docs
$ sphinx-build source build

it will compile docs into build folder, you can run index.html inside that function.

How to use

If you want to use the inline versions of functions, then include the main header

#include <cglm/cglm.h>

the header will include all headers. Then call the func you want e.g. rotate vector by axis:

glm_vec3_rotate(v1, glm_rad(45), (vec3){1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f});

some functions are overloaded :) e.g you can normalize vector:

glm_vec3_normalize(vec);

this will normalize vec and store normalized vector into vec but if you will store normalized vector into another vector do this:

glm_vec3_normalize_to(vec, result);

like this function you may see _to postfix, this functions store results to another variables and save temp memory

to call pre-compiled versions include header with c postfix, c means call. Pre-compiled versions are just wrappers.

#include <cglm/call.h>

this header will include all headers with c postfix. You need to call functions with c posfix:

glmc_vec3_normalize(vec);

Function usage and parameters are documented inside related headers. You may see same parameter passed twice in some examples like this:

glm_mat4_mul(m1, m2, m1);

/* or */
glm_mat4_mul(m1, m1, m1);

the first two parameter are [in] and the last one is [out] parameter. After multiplying m1 and m2, the result is stored in m1. This is why we send m1 twice. You may store the result in a different matrix, this is just an example.

Example: Computing MVP matrix

Option 1

mat4 proj, view, model, mvp;

/* init proj, view and model ... */

glm_mat4_mul(proj, view, viewProj);
glm_mat4_mul(viewProj, model, mvp);

Option 2

mat4 proj, view, model, mvp;

/* init proj, view and model ... */

glm_mat4_mulN((mat4 *[]){&proj, &view, &model}, 3, mvp);

How to send matrix to OpenGL

mat4 is array of vec4 and vec4 is array of floats. glUniformMatrix4fv functions accecpts float* as value (last param), so you can cast mat4 to float* or you can pass first column of matrix as beginning of memory of matrix:

Option 1: Send first column

glUniformMatrix4fv(location, 1, GL_FALSE, matrix[0]);

/* array of matrices */
glUniformMatrix4fv(location, 1, GL_FALSE, matrix[0][0]);

Option 2: Cast matrix to pointer type (also valid for multiple dimensional arrays)

glUniformMatrix4fv(location, 1, GL_FALSE, (float *)matrix);

You can pass matrices the same way to other APIs e.g. Vulkan, DX...

Notes

• This library uses float types only, does not support Integers, Double... yet
• If headers are not working properly with your compiler, IDE please open an issue, because I'm using GCC and clang to test it maybe sometimes MSVC

TODO:

• Unit tests (In Progress)
• Unit tests for comparing cglm with glm results
• Add version info
• Unaligned operations (e.g. glm_umat4_mul)
• Extra documentation
• ARM Neon Arch (In Progress)

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License

MIT. check the LICENSE file