1 MINUTE VEX IV & V

Introduction To Normalized Device Coordinates


Normalized Device Coordinate or NDC space is a coordinate system used in rendering, mapping our display to a cube (known as the ‘view volume’) wherein x, y and z are within the range -1 to 1.

Transforming vertices to NDC space is the essential intermediary between world space and screen space (our 3D mapped to 2D pixels) - and can be a tricky subject to understand without any pre-existing knowledge on linear mapping.

Luckily, SideFX has done the heavy lifting for us! Using toNDC() we can provide a camera and point position in order to translate P into its respective NDC.



Scaling Objects By Camera NDC


In this example, we begin by providing a camera path as string. We use the chs() function, as this spare parameter has a great deal of node finding utility.

Once we have converted P to NDC, we can multiply the z component of our new coordinates. This will keep our points within the exact same display position, but drawing that relative position closer/further to our camera.

Now that we have our adjusted position, we convert our NDC back to world position and assign to P.





Culling Points by Camera NDC


For this example, we begin once again by creating a variable camera path as a string parameter. 

We then set up our ‘cull_scale’ which is the proportion of the display that will be culled. In order to have our parameter retain 0% of the display at 0, and 100% at 1, we multiply the scale by 0.5 (1 / number of axes) and initialize our min and max at the same - with min being subtracted from, and max being added to.

Once we have converted P to NDC, we can compare each float component of our vector to its relevant min/max positions. If it is outside the min/max, an array value will be 1 (true). Z values above 0 are culled because NDC space is a right hand coordinate system.

Finally, using foreach, we loop over each comparison. If the axis has returned true for sitting outside of our bounds, we remove the point and exit the looping process.