Creating a static background when using camera transforms in Allegro 5

Question

How can I draw a static bitmap for the background of an Allegro 5 graphics window, if I'm using camera transformations to apply perspective to bitmaps in front of the background so it appears that they're otherwise in a 3D space?

If I try simply drawing a bitmap to the backbuffer without any transforms applied, and then call al_use_transform on a perspective transform when drawing the other objects, the "background" moves along with the transform.

Answer 1

What you describe should work. One common mistake is forgetting to reset the transform each time you draw the background.

You probably want something like this in your draw loop:

void draw() {
    ALLEGRO_TRANSFORM trans;
    al_identity_transform(&trans);
    al_use_transform(&trans);
    al_draw_bitmap(background, 0, 0, 0)

    al_translate_transform(&trans, 20, 20);
    al_use_transform(&trans);
    al_draw_bitmap(foreground, 0, 0, 0)
}

If you forget to apply the identity transformation before drawing the background, it will continue using whatever you set with the previous call to al_use_transform.