QGLWidget Class Reference
[QtOpenGL module]

Detailed Description

The QGLWidget class is a widget for rendering OpenGL graphics.

QGLWidget provides functionality for displaying OpenGL graphics integrated into a Qt application. It is very simple to use. You inherit from it and use the subclass like any other QWidget, except that you have the choice between using QPainter and standard OpenGL rendering commands.

QGLWidget provides three convenient virtual functions that you can reimplement in your subclass to perform the typical OpenGL tasks:

• paintGL() - Renders the OpenGL scene. Gets called whenever the widget needs to be updated.
• resizeGL() - Sets up the OpenGL viewport, projection, etc. Gets called whenever the widget has been resized (and also when it is shown for the first time because all newly created widgets get a resize event automatically).
• initializeGL() - Sets up the OpenGL rendering context, defines display lists, etc. Gets called once before the first time resizeGL() or paintGL() is called.

Here is a rough outline of how a QGLWidget subclass might look:

 class MyGLDrawer : public QGLWidget
 {
     Q_OBJECT        // must include this if you use Qt signals/slots

 public:
     MyGLDrawer(QWidget *parent)
         : QGLWidget(parent) {}

 protected:

     void initializeGL()
     {
         // Set up the rendering context, define display lists etc.:
         ...
         glClearColor(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0);
         glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST);
         ...
     }

     void resizeGL(int w, int h)
     {
         // setup viewport, projection etc.:
         glViewport(0, 0, (GLint)w, (GLint)h);
         ...
         glFrustum(...);
         ...
     }

     void paintGL()
     {
         // draw the scene:
         ...
         glRotatef(...);
         glMaterialfv(...);
         glBegin(GL_QUADS);
         glVertex3f(...);
         glVertex3f(...);
         ...
         glEnd();
         ...
     }

 };

If you need to trigger a repaint from places other than paintGL() (a typical example is when using timers to animate scenes), you should call the widget's updateGL() function.

Your widget's OpenGL rendering context is made current when paintGL(), resizeGL(), or initializeGL() is called. If you need to call the standard OpenGL API functions from other places (e.g. in your widget's constructor or in your own paint functions), you must call makeCurrent() first.

QGLWidget provides functions for requesting a new display format and you can also create widgets with customized rendering contexts.

You can also share OpenGL display lists between QGLWidget objects (see the documentation of the QGLWidget constructors for details).

Note that under Windows, the QGLContext belonging to a QGLWidget has to be recreated when the QGLWidget is reparented. This is necessary due to limitations on the Windows platform. This will most likely cause problems for users that have subclassed and installed their own QGLContext on a QGLWidget. It is possible to work around this issue by putting the QGLWidget inside a dummy widget and then reparenting the dummy widget, instead of the QGLWidget. This will side-step the issue altogether, and is what we recommend for users that need this kind of functionality.

On Mac OS X, when Qt is built with Cocoa support, a QGLWidget can't have any sibling widgets placed ontop of itself. This is due to limitations in the Cocoa API and is not supported by Apple.