[Bug 23014] Backface-visibility cannot be tested by only looking at m33

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=23014

--- Comment #1 from Dirk Schulze <dschulze@adobe.com> ---
(In reply to Shawn Singh from comment #0)
> Created attachment 1386 [details]
> Example of a transform that needs to account for perspective for correct
> backface-visibility.
> 
> According to the current spec, backface-visibility must be checked by
> testing whether the m33 element of the matrix is positive or negative. But
> the problem is that this only works without a perspective component.
> 
> Actually, it seems like this is already acknowledged since the spec says
> "before accounting for perspective". However, backface-visibility will often
> need to be tested on matrices that have perspective in them:
>   - by definition of the "accumulated 3d transformation matrix" the
> perspective will be included in that matrix
>   - a user may use the matrix3d() transform function in their CSS to specify
> arbitrary perspective on an element, even if it is not in a 3d rendering
> context.
> 
> I attached an example page with a layer rotated just more than 90 degrees. 
> In this configuration, the layer's backface would be visible if there is an
> orthographic projection.  Under perspective projection, if set up correctly,
> the layer's front side is actually visible.
> 
> The accumulated 3d transformation matrix of that example is:
> 
> [ +1.0574 +0.0000 +2.4037 +88.5277
>   +1.2310 +1.0000 +0.4341 +53.7981
>   -0.4924 +0.0000 -0.1736 +98.4808
>   +0.0025 +0.0000 +0.0009 +0.5076 ]
> 
> The m33 element is negative, but because of perspective, we should interpret
> that the front side of the layer is facing the camera.
> 
> Instead of checking m33, there are at least two ways to correctly implement
> backface visibility:
> 
> (1) Inspect vertices of the element being drawn for clockwise /
> counter-clockwise, similar to how game engines often perform backface culling
> 
> (2) Rigorously apply the transform the z normal, and check the transformed
> normal is still facing the camera (i.e. it's z value is positive or
> negative).  However, we cannot just apply the transform to the z normal by
> doing a basic matrix*vector operation --> that is why checking m33 only is
> not correct.  Instead, mathematically if we want to transform a surface
> normal, we must do inverseTranspose(matrix) * normalVector.
> 
> Knowing that the normalVector is (0, 0, 1, 0), we don't have to compute a
> heavy full inverse, and the implementation can remain mostly lightweight. 
> You can see chrome's implementation here:
>  
> https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/ui/gfx/transform.
> cc&q=gfx::Transform::IsBackFaceVisible&sq=package:chromium&type=cs&l=219
> 
> I have not tested how the attached example works in IE.  Firefox, Safari,
> and Chrome seem to get backface visibility correct on the attached example
> page -- which implies that no browser is checking for (m33 < 0) anyway.
> 
> So, would it work just to change the spec to be mathematically correct and
> to reflect what browsers already implement?

We already seek requests from browser vendors for that. Thank you very much for
your input. I agree that we need to take the perspective into account. Looking
at m33 is not enough. I still need to check the math. Do you have a source for
the suggested method other than a source file in Chrome? I suggest posting this
conclusion on the mailing list so that hopefully more people will read this.

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Received on Wednesday, 25 September 2013 21:09:42 UTC