How do you render primitives as wireframes in OpenGL?

Question

glPolygonMode( GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_LINE );

to switch on,

glPolygonMode( GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_FILL );

to go back to normal.

Note that things like texture-mapping and lighting will still be applied to the wireframe lines if they're enabled, which can look weird.

From http://cone3d.gamedev.net/cgi-bin/index.pl?page=tutorials/ogladv/tut5

// Turn on wireframe mode
glPolygonMode(GL_FRONT, GL_LINE);
glPolygonMode(GL_BACK, GL_LINE);

// Draw the box
DrawBox();

// Turn off wireframe mode
glPolygonMode(GL_FRONT, GL_FILL);
glPolygonMode(GL_BACK, GL_FILL);

Assuming a forward-compatible context in OpenGL 3 and up, you can either use glPolygonMode as mentioned before, but note that lines with thickness more than 1px are now deprecated. So while you can draw triangles as wire-frame, they need to be very thin. In OpenGL ES, you can use GL_LINES with the same limitation.

In OpenGL it is possible to use geometry shaders to take incoming triangles, disassemble them and send them for rasterization as quads (pairs of triangles really) emulating thick lines. Pretty simple, really, except that geometry shaders are notorious for poor performance scaling.

What you can do instead, and what will also work in OpenGL ES is to employ fragment shader. Think of applying a texture of wire-frame triangle to the triangle. Except that no texture is needed, it can be generated procedurally. But enough talk, let's code. Fragment shader:

in vec3 v_barycentric; // barycentric coordinate inside the triangle
uniform float f_thickness; // thickness of the rendered lines

void main()
{
    float f_closest_edge = min(v_barycentric.x,
        min(v_barycentric.y, v_barycentric.z)); // see to which edge this pixel is the closest
    float f_width = fwidth(f_closest_edge); // calculate derivative (divide f_thickness by this to have the line width constant in screen-space)
    float f_alpha = smoothstep(f_thickness, f_thickness + f_width, f_closest_edge); // calculate alpha
    gl_FragColor = vec4(vec3(.0), f_alpha);
}

And vertex shader:

in vec4 v_pos; // position of the vertices
in vec3 v_bc; // barycentric coordinate inside the triangle

out vec3 v_barycentric; // barycentric coordinate inside the triangle

uniform mat4 t_mvp; // modeview-projection matrix

void main()
{
    gl_Position = t_mvp * v_pos;
    v_barycentric = v_bc; // just pass it on
}

Here, the barycentric coordinates are simply (1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0) and (0, 0, 1) for the three triangle vertices (the order does not really matter, which makes packing into triangle strips potentially easier).

The obvious disadvantage of this approach is that it will eat some texture coordinates and you need to modify your vertex array. Could be solved with a very simple geometry shader but I'd still suspect it will be slower than just feeding the GPU with more data.

If you are using the fixed pipeline (OpenGL < 3.3) or the compatibility profile you can use

//Turn on wireframe mode
glPolygonMode(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_LINE);

//Draw the scene with polygons as lines (wireframe)
renderScene();

//Turn off wireframe mode
glPolygonMode(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_FILL);

In this case you can change the line width by calling glLineWidth

Otherwise you need to change the polygon mode inside your draw method (glDrawElements, glDrawArrays, etc) and you may end up with some rough results because your vertex data is for triangles and you are outputting lines. For best results consider using a Geometry shader or creating new data for the wireframe.

In Modern OpenGL(OpenGL 3.2 and higher), you could use a Geometry Shader for this :

#version 330

layout (triangles) in;
layout (line_strip /*for lines, use "points" for points*/, max_vertices=3) out;

in vec2 texcoords_pass[]; //Texcoords from Vertex Shader
in vec3 normals_pass[]; //Normals from Vertex Shader

out vec3 normals; //Normals for Fragment Shader
out vec2 texcoords; //Texcoords for Fragment Shader

void main(void)
{
    int i;
    for (i = 0; i < gl_in.length(); i++)
    {
        texcoords=texcoords_pass[i]; //Pass through
        normals=normals_pass[i]; //Pass through
        gl_Position = gl_in[i].gl_Position; //Pass through
        EmitVertex();
    }
    EndPrimitive();
}

Notices :

• for points, change layout (line_strip, max_vertices=3) out; to layout (points, max_vertices=3) out;
• Read more about Geometry Shaders

The easiest way is to draw the primitives as GL_LINE_STRIP.

glBegin(GL_LINE_STRIP);
/* Draw vertices here */
glEnd();

You can use glut libraries like this:

1. for a sphere:

   glutWireSphere(radius,20,20);
   

2. for a Cylinder:

   GLUquadric *quadratic = gluNewQuadric();
   gluQuadricDrawStyle(quadratic,GLU_LINE);
   gluCylinder(quadratic,1,1,1,12,1);
   

3. for a Cube:

   glutWireCube(1.5);