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Project3

Project 3: Graphics Town

Update: we have changed to "due date" rules a little bit:

• Everyone gets an extension until the beginning of their scheduled demo time.
• Documentation can be turned in (potentially late, if you have used your late pass) until 5pm, Friday, December 15th.

Due Tuesday, December 12th, 9:30am. Late assignments accepted according to the course late policy..

Note: Because of some University rules, all work you do (including giving a demo) is supposed to be done before exams begin. This means that project demos will be the last week of classes.

Note: for this project you may work together in teams of two. If you plan to do this, BOTH teammates must send mail to Mohamed before Thanksgiving (November 23rd). The entire team will receive the same grade.

Quick Links: GraphicsTown2006 example code and FAQ, Previous Student Ideas and Gallery

1.  Overview

The goal of this project is to create a city. But, since you only have a few weeks, it may be more like a town.You will create a program that allows the user to explore the town by flying around in it, or by looking at it from the vantage point of an inhabitant.Your town cannot be a dead place: there must be things moving around in it.

What is in your town, as well as what is happening there is up to you. We hope you will be creative. Make houses, trees, stores, cars, roads, helicopters, construction equipment, people, boats, ...What goes on in the town is up to you - make the cars drive around, drawbridges open and close, construction equipment operate, ...

We hesitate to tell you what to do, since students in the past have come up with some really creative things - we've seen cities with skyscrapers, space cities with flying saucers, a Harry Potter city with flying broomsticks, ... Some things that students did in previous years are shown here (but you might want to start with the gallery).

If this sounds like its arbitrarily open-ended, you have the right idea. Clearly, you could make this as fancy as you want. Obviously, we will try to set our expectations to be only somewhat unreasonable :-) Our goal is to give you the opportunity to demonstrate your competence at writing 3D graphics programs, as well as an opportunity to experiment with some more advanced topics that you think are interesting.

The basic requirements are very simple. You should try to achieve them in a manner that provides flexibility so you can add fancier features as time permits. In terms of which fancier features to implement? You should pick the things that are most interesting to you. We will give you lots of ideas...

We will provide you with a framework to build on top of. You may choose not to use it, but you must provide its basic functionality (things like navigation, the ability to jump to interesting places, ...). The sample code is not perfect, but will give you the opportunity to work inside of someone else's system, and to figure out someone else's program.

You will be allowed to work in pairs on this assignment, subject to some rules.

2.  Historical Note

Graphics Town has been a popular project for the graphics class for the past several years. Students have enjoyed the chance to be creative, and we (the instructor/TA) like the chance to see lots of cool stuff. The open-ended nature of the project allowed students to spend energy learning / trying out stuff in graphics that they found interesting - including stuff that we don't get to in class.

In 2005, we revised the project. Our goal is to keep the open-ended "learn what you're interested in and be creative" aspect, while being more specific about what our expectations are and making sure that the people take on enough technical challenges.

As in previous years, we provided a sample solution for people to start with. In the past, it was (purposely) buggy and simple. However, we have spruced it up a bit and encourage people to use it, so you can spend more time adding cool new things.

Each year, about half the students chose to use it (vs. writing their own from scratch) - although each year more people use the sample code.

3.  Objectives

The overall goal of this project is to give you an opportunity to explore topics in interactive graphics: how do you make things that look interesting, and be interactive. While some of this is artistic (you need to pick interesting objects to make and good textures/... to look nice), some of it is technical: you need to pick things that can be implemented efficiently and have interesting behavior.

In terms of your grade, effort spent on technical are more valuable. For example, it is better to spend your time making a simple "blocky" car drive around in an interesting way, or to make a simple shaped car out of parametric surfaces, or to light the car in an interesting way, then to carefully model a gorgeous model of a car. (of course, if you want to make model a gorgeous car, implement bezier patches to display its curved body, have it realistically race around a track ... - we won't complain).

Some specific things we want you to learn from this assignment (which will explain some of the requirements):

1. To learn how to work within someone else's code - even if that code isn't perfect. (so, we'll encourage you to use my code as a starting point)
2. To try out some of the technical topics that we've discussed in class (subdivision surfaces, culling, ...) or topics we won't discuss too much in class (particle systems, fractals, ...)
3. To get some experience with how textures are used to make simple objects look more interesting.
4. To get some experience with creating geometry for graphics.
5. To gain experience working with a larger, more complex graphics application.
6. To gain some experience creating the behavior/motion of graphics objects.
7. To work with modeling an articulated object.

4.  The Basic Requirements

4.1  Components

Your town must have:

1. At least 5 objects moving at any time (besides the ones that I made)
2. At least 2 (3 for groups) different types of behaviors (besides the ones that I made)
3. At least 3 (5 for groups) different types of buildings / scenery (besides the ones that I made)
4. You must add at least 3 (6 for groups) new textures to the system. At least 1 (2 for groups) must be hand painted. At least 1 (per person) must not be flat (that is, it must wrap onto multiple polygons)
5. You must attempt "enough" technical challenges (see the technical challenges page).
6. You must have an articulated object (that moves its articulation) per person.
7. You program must work at a sufficient frame rate (which isn't hard since the B240 computers are so fast. however, if your world gets really complicated, you might want to add culling and level of detail (see the technical challenges page).
8. You must add at least 1 (2 for groups) things that are effected by the time of day.
9. You must use at least one type of "advanced" texture mapping: multi-texturing, projective (slide projector) texturing, environment mapping, bump mapping, or shadow mapping. (if you want to pick something not on this list, you may want to check with us to make sure it counts)

4.2  Evaluating aspects

There are three aspects of this project, all will be considered in evaluating your project:

1. Technical challenge (how much hard graphics technique did you use). See the technical challenges page.
2. Visual Complexity of your world (how cool/interesting does it look - sometimes a few really interesting things can be as good as a lot of simpler things)
3. Behavioral Complexity of your world (how interesting are the things that happen in it).

This is the order of importance. While having some degree of success in all categories is important, sometimes excellence in one category can outweigh deficiencies in another.

Some students are concerned that we don't give more clear grading criteria, however, it is hard for this project. To help with this, we will schedule some "open lab" hours before the project is due so you can s describe your ideas and how us your preliminary results and we can give you some idea as to whether you are attempting to do enough to get the grade you want.

5.  The Sample Solution

We will provide you with a basic implementation to get started with.

The original sample assignment was written very quickly in 2000. It wasn't pretty. But many students used it as the basis of their projects.

We have tuned it up a bit - a lot of what was broken have been fixed, and the internals has been cleaned up to be easier to understand. There are some new simple example behaviors, and the complex behavior (the driving model) has been cleaned up to be more understandable (albeit not as cool - but you might consider adding to that).

While the code isn't perfect, it is our expectation that it is easier to use it as a starting point than to start from scratch. Yes, you will be spending some time reading and figuring out some not-so-great code (as well as some pretty good code), but this is good practice.

There are some features that my code provides that are important for the project. You should make sure that they still work when you're done (and you need to implement them should you decide to start from scratch):

• You must be able to fly around the town to look at things.
• You must have "shortcuts" to go directly to places where particularly interesting things are.
• You must have several vehicles moving around. (this doesn't necessarily mean cars - one student had a space-town with ships flying around, another in a Harry Potter inspired project had brooms flying around castles)
• You must be able to control the time of day. The time of day should affect the lighting and the actions that occur.

If you do use my sample code, in addition to adding new types of objects and behaviors you must also:

• Either not use my silly looking houses and cars, or make them look better.
• Improve the navigational interface. Ideally, this will mean better flying controls AND the ability to look around after picking a "sight". One particularly annoying aspect of my UI is that movement speed is tied to frame rate.

The sample code is discussed on another page.

6.  Working Together

For this assignment, we allow you to work with a partner. However, there are some rules for doing this:

1. Each person on a team gets the same grade for the project. We appreciate honesty in saying who did the work, but if you are lucky enough to find a partner who does everything for you, well, ultimately you will lose out because you won't learn as much.
2. Before the checkpoint (November 23th), you must send the TA email saying who you will be working with.
3. After the checkpoint, you may not break up your group.
4. All team members must be present at the grading demo.
5. Each person must make at least 1 of the new buildings/scenery, 1 of the behaviors, 1 of the articulated objects, 1 thing effected by the time of day, and paint one of the textures.

While the expectations are higher for groups than for individuals, they are not that much higher.

7.  What to hand in?

As usual, you must hand in everything needed to build and run your program, including all texture files and other resources.

If you work with a partner, please put a single file in your handing directory - a README.txt that says where to look.

In your readme, please make sure to have the following (you can break it into seperate files if you prefer):

• Instructions on how to use your program (in case we want to use it when you're not around)
• A list of the objects you modeled (if you made lots of different objects, just list the 5-10 most interesting ones). Please order the list so the most complicated/impressive one is first.
• A list of the behaviors you made. Please order the list so the most complicated/impressive one is first.
• A list of the technical challenges that you attempted / completed, with a description of what you did and what you used it for.

You should make a subdirectory of the project directory called "Gallery." In this directory, please put a few JPG pictures of the best scenes in your town. Please name the pictures login-X.jpg (where X is a number). Put a text file in the directory with captions for the pictures. (note: to make pictures, use the screen print and then use some program to convert them to JPG).

8.  Other Resources

If you want to use advanced GL Features (like MultiTextures), you should use an Extension Manager. Be sure to include it in your handin. Some advice on extensions (and sample code for multi-texturing) can be found here.

Many students in past years have either written loaders for various model formats, or found model file readers on the web. You are welcome to do either. However, be sure to give proper attribution if you appropriate code or models. Also, be sure to include all of the models in the handin.

If you do use a model reader, remember that you must make some of the objects yourself.

9.  Grading

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to give a grading procedure ahead of time. Every project is so different.

The main thing is we'll look at the demos to see how cool/complex your world is and how well your technical components work.

Some students are concerned that we don't give more clear grading criteria, however, it is hard for this project. To help with this, we will schedule some "open lab" hours before the project is due so you can s describe your ideas and how us your preliminary results and we can give you some idea as to whether you are attempting to do enough to get the grade you want.