How to check if an object lies outside the clipping volume in OpenGL?
Apply the model-view-projection matrix to the object, then check if it lies outside the clip coordinate frustum, which is defined by the planes:
-w < x < w
-w < y < w
0 < z < w
So if you have a point p
which is a vec3, and a model-view-projection matrix, M
, then in GLSL it would look like this:
bool in_frustum(mat4 M, vec3 p) {
vec4 Pclip = M * vec4(p, 1.);
return abs(Pclip.x) < Pclip.w &&
abs(Pclip.y) < Pclip.w &&
0 < Pclip.z &&
Pclip.z < Pclip.w;
}
To determine if a given point will be visible on the screen, you test it against the viewing frustum. See this frustum culling tutorial:
http://www.lighthouse3d.com/tutorials/view-frustum-culling/
For anyone relying on the accepted answer, it is incorrect (at least in current implementations). OpenGL clips in the z plane the same as the x and y as -w < z < w (https://www.khronos.org/opengl/wiki/Vertex_Post-Processing).
The two tests for z should then be: std::abs(Pclip.z) < Pclip.w
Checking for zero will exclude all the drawn points that are closer to the near field clip plane than the far field clip plane.