Tutorials

Tutorials on how to get the best out of OpenGL ES on Mali GPUs.

Note

Finished versions of all of the tutorials listed are included in the SDK. See Building Android samples for instructions on how to use them.

Tutorials

These tutorials introduce the basics of an OpenGL ES application. The source for these samples can be found in the folder of the SDK.

Summary of changes between versions of the OpenGL ES SDK for Android.

1. First Android Native Application

   An introduction and walkthrough of Android native applications.

2. Introduction to shaders

   A quick introduction to the programmable graphics pipeline introduced in OpenGL ES 2.0.

3. Graphics Setup

   Setting up your application ready for graphics.

4. Simple Triangle

   How to create your first triangle.

5. Simple Cube

   Introduction in transformations and movement in OpenGL ES 2.0.

6. Texture Cube

   How to start texturing your objects to make them look realistic.

7. Lighting

   Basic lighting using OpenGL ES 2.0.

8. Normal Mapping

   Basic Normal Mapping tutorial that uses Normal Maps.

9. Asset Loading

   Using the Open Asset Importer to load models into OpenGL ES.

10. Vertex Buffer Objects

    How to use Vertex Buffer Objects to reduce the bandwidth in your application.

11. Android File Loading

    How to package assets up into the apk and load files from the file system.

12. Mipmapping and Compressed Textures

    This tutorial introduces the idea of mipmapping and compressed textures.

13. Projected Lights

    Projected Lights effect using OpenGL ES 3.0.

14. Bloom

    Bloom effect using OpenGL ES 3.0.

15. Min Max Blending

    The application demonstrates behaviour of blending in GL_MIN and GL_MAX mode in OpenGL ES 3.0.

16. Integer Logic

    The application simulates cellular automata phenomenon following Rule 30 using OpenGL ES 3.0.

17. ETC2 Texture

    Demonstration of ETC2 texture compression support in OpenGL ES 3.0.

18. Boids

    Demonstration of Transform Feedback functionality in OpenGL ES 3.0.

19. Shadow Mapping

    Demonstration of shadow mapping functionality using OpenGL ES 3.0.

20. Occlusion Query

    Demonstration of Occlusion Query functionality in OpenGL ES 3.0.

21. Instanced Tessellation

    The application displays a rotating solid torus with a low-polygon wireframed mesh surrounding it. The torus is drawn by means of instanced tessellation technique using OpenGL ES 3.0.

22. Instancing

    This sample presents the instanced drawing technique using OpenGL ES 3.0.

23. Using multiview rendering

    This sample presents the GL_OVR_multiview and GL_OVR_multiview2 extensions and how they can be used to improve performance for virtual reality use cases.

Advanced Samples

These samples show optimised implementations of more complex algorithms. The source for these samples can be found in the folder of the SDK.

• Texture Compression and Alpha Channels

  This document describes the related samples "ETCAtlasAlpha", "ETCCompressedAlpha", and "ETCUncompressedAlpha", which illustrate three different ways of handling alpha channels when using ETC1 compression.

• High Quality Text Rendering

  Improving quality for textured text.

• Thread Synchronisation

  Illustrates the use of sync objects to synchronise the use of shared objects between multiple contexts in multiple threads.

• Metaballs

  Using a GPU to create organic-looking 3-dimensional objects in OpenGL ES 3.0.

• Terrain Rendering with Geometry Clipmaps

  This sample will show you how to efficiently implement geometry clipmaps using OpenGL ES 3.0. The sample makes use of 2D texture arrays as well as instancing to efficiently render an infinitely large terrain. The terrain is asynchronously uploaded to the GPU using pixel buffer objects.

• Skybox

  This sample presents how to implement skybox using single cubemap texture.

• Advanced Shading Techniques with Pixel Local Storage

  This sample uses OpenGL ES 3.0 and Pixel Local Storage to perform advanced shading techniques. The sample computes a per-pixel object thickness, and uses it to render a subsurface scattering effect for translucent geometry, without the use of external depth-maps or additional rendertargets.

• ASTC textures

  This document describes usage of compressed ASTC textures.

• ASTC low precision

  This document describes how to enable and use the ASTC decode mode extension to select decoding precision when decoding ASTC image blocks.

• Introduction to compute shaders

  This document will give you an introduction to compute shaders in OpenGL ES 3.1, how they fit into the rest of OpenGL ES and how you can make use of it in your application. Using compute shaders effectively requires a new mindset where parallel computation is exposed more explicitly to developers. With this explicitness, various new primitives are introduced which allows compute shader threads to share access to memory and synchronize execution.

• Particle Flow Simulation with Compute Shaders

  This sample illustrates how to efficiently perform calculations on a large amount of particles using OpenGL ES 3.1 and compute shaders.

• Occlusion Culling with Hierarchical-Z

  This sample will show you how to efficiently implement occlusion culling using compute shaders in OpenGL ES 3.1. The sample tests visibility for a large number of instances in parallel and only draws the instances which are assumed to be visible. Using this technique can in certain scenes give a tremendous performance increase.

• Ocean Rendering with Fast Fourier Transform

  This sample will show you how to efficiently implement high quality ocean water rendering using compute shaders in OpenGL ES 3.1.

• Displacement mapping with tessellation

  This sample uses OpenGL ES 3.1 and the Android extension pack to perform displacement mapping with tessellation. The sample investigates common techniques used to improve performance and visuals.

• Procedural modelling with geometry shaders

  This sample uses OpenGL ES 3.1 and the Android extension pack to procedurally generate complex geometry in real-time with geometry shaders.

The rest of the advanced samples are summarised in Advanced OpenGL ES Samples