Problem with billboarding

I've tried getting billboarding to work, it seems easy enough, but no matter what I do it doesn't actually work. The bitmaps seem to somewhat turn with the camera but they are never actually completely perpendicular.

Here is what I have so far, what am I doing wrong? It's probably something incredibly obvious.

Code:

void	Meteor::CallDraw(){
	red = (int)rand()%255;
	green = (int)rand()%255;
	blue = (int)rand()%255;
	float scale = 10;
	float	MVMAT[16];
	glGetFloatv(GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX, &MVMAT[0]);
	
	//FIXME: I don't know if I need the transpose or what is going on here
	Vector	up(MVMAT[0], MVMAT[1], MVMAT[2]);
	Vector	right(MVMAT[4], MVMAT[5], MVMAT[6]);
	
	glPushMatrix();
	glDisable(GL_LIGHTING);
	glEnable(GL_BLEND);	
	glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture);		//THIS IS ACTUALLY THE PARTICLE TEXTURE, hmmm?
	glTranslatef(Position.x, Position.y, Position.z);
	glColor4ub(red, green, blue, transparency);
	glBegin(GL_QUADS);
	glTexCoord2f(0.0f, 0.0f);
glVertex3f(Position.x + (up.x + right.x) * -scale, Position.y + (up.y + right.y) * -scale, Position.z);
	glTexCoord2f(1.0f, 0.0f);
glVertex3f(Position.x + (-up.x + right.x) * scale, Position.y + (-up.y + right.y) * scale, Position.z); 
	glTexCoord2f(1.0f, 1.0f);
glVertex3f(Position.x + (up.x + right.x) * scale, Position.y + (up.y + right.y) * scale, Position.z);
	glTexCoord2f(0.0f, 1.0f);
glVertex3f(Position.x + (up.x + -right.x) * scale, Position.y + (up.y + -right.y) * scale, Position.z);
	glEnd();
	glDisable(GL_BLEND);
	glEnable(GL_LIGHTING);
	glPopMatrix();
}

I have tried using what the original model view matrix would be and what the transpose would be. i.e:
Vector up(MVMAT[0], MVMAT[1], MVMAT[2]);
Vector right(MVMAT[4], MVMAT[5], MVMAT[6]);

Oke, This bill board, It's a quad with a texture on it? And it
always faces the screen, When is always? Can you walk around
in space and it always faces you or?

yes, that's what billboarding does. what's really supposed to happen is you're supposed to reverse the effects of the model view matrix by multiplying by its inverse. Instead (from ogl game programming) you can get the current up and right vectors from the modelview matrix, and use those to create the texture mapped quad. If you use components from the up and right vectors from the modelview matrix to set the vertices of the quad then the quad will always be facing the camera. I know I'm prolly doing something really stupid wrong. fuk

Wooow!!! Cut down on the expensive talk!
What exactly are you trying at accomplish?

BILLBOARDING
UGG
BITMAP ALWAYS FACE VIEWER

You left your caps-lock on,
Never knew that was called billboarding well, Why go through
all the fuss for something simple like that? If i'm not mistaken,
You can use orthographic graphics for 2D things like billboards,
Otherwise just use a simple quad and keep track of any rotation
and apply to reverse of any rotation to the billboard.

you can't have a z component when you go into 2d ortho mode therefore that will not work, and this is actually the simplest method. i was hoping someone who had already done billboarding could check this out and correct me where i am wrong.

No, I haven't done it before, But it seems easy to me. Can't you
scale it in any way to accomplish some form of depth?

nein don quijote

Right, Well at first sight your code seems fine, But i can't tell if
it would work or not since i have a far different and more brute
force approach.

do you have something that works that you could show me

Not really, As i said i haven't done anything yet like that before.

try this....

Code:

Vector up(MVMAT[0], MVMAT[4], MVMAT[8]);
Vector right(MVMAT[1], MVMAT[5], MVMAT[9]);

// matrix might look like this

0  1  2   3
4  5  6   7
8  9 10 11

I have tried using what the original model view matrix would be and what the transpose would be. i.e:
Vector up(MVMAT[0], MVMAT[1], MVMAT[2]);
Vector right(MVMAT[4], MVMAT[5], MVMAT[6]);

anyway I think the problem was because
1) I am a dumbass
2) I left out the Z component of the billbaord. I left my laptop at school though so I can't finish it.


EDIT: well I got it working, that's what the problem was, no biggie. I'll post it sometime when I've made some more updates, if you want.

travis you should help me think of ideas for this game, i.e I was thinking of having the weapons be billboarded bitmaps that travel in a sine wave, just like the railgun from quake II. You should help me think of stuff like that.