Theme Park Scene - Ferris Wheel

I have now finished most of the modelling I wish to implement into my theme park scene, the final model being the ferris wheel. The following are some images of the ferris wheel.

The carts themselves are their own model, included in the ferris wheel is an array of cart models. These are then given a position at initialization in their constructor using circle approximation.

In the following few days I will begin to add more interaction to the scene, here are the planned features:

• Improve Camera movement with pitch rotation.
• Add extra pre-defined viewing points
• Add Night lighting mode
• Add buttons (in the scene) to make both carousel and ferris wheel rotate.
• Add Wii Remote functionality using the WiiYourself library.

Christmas Mode!

I have added a christmas mode to the Theme Park scene, now featuring a christmas tree and snowman. These models disappear when christmas mode is turned off. The tree is made of a cylinder for it's trunk, and several cylinders used to represent it's leaves, being scaled down as they go up. I would also like to add some present models to go around the tree.

Theme Park Scene V2.0

Since my last update, I have done quite a major rewrite of the Theme Park scene's code and class structure in order to improve it's efficiency. Originally, when creating a primitive within a model, all that would be defined within the constructor would be the type of primitive and it's color or texture. This meant that at runtime, the program rotated, translated and scaled all of these objects into place for each model, and then again to place the models in the scene. This is a very inefficient way of generating the scene on each frame, and so I thought it would be more efficient to define primitive scale and position within a model within the constructor. This means that at runtime, all that needs to be transformed are the models themselves, greatly improving efficiency.

Whilst reworking the code, I was also able to rewrite all of my models, and in doing so add more detail to them. Below are some screenshots of the new version of my Theme Park scene.

An overview of what's completed in the new scene.

The benches are now modelled using cylinders to a more realistic effect.

The carousel has been given much more detail than the original.

An addition to the scene, this will soon be a ferris wheel.

   

Another addition to the scene is flower beds.

The fountain has been given extra detail.

 The Go Kart Track is another new addition. It uses rings to make up the track and barrier, and also the tyres around the centre. These are placed using the same circle approximation algorithm used to generate discs and rings.

An image of the tyres around the centre of the Go Kart Track.

 The river has now been dropped into the ground itself. This takes out the need for a river wall, and instead fences can be used. The fence model itself is now made to be of variable size, and the number of sections required and the length of each section can be passed into it's constructor. This creates a more realistic effect than before. The bridge has yet to be remodelled, and so is omitted in this image.

Theme Park Scene 6

I have added a fountain model to the theme park, along with an additional version of the cube primitive with no top surface. I have also added a light model that will be used several times throughout the park, and will have lights attached to them to use when night time lighting is enabled.

Below is a video of the fountain's water. It creates a slightly more realistic effect than the river,as the subdivisions are less stretched, and the surface is a square as opposed to rectangular.

Below is an overview of the main section of the theme park. With each update I will take a screenshot from the same position in the scene, to get a picture of how it is developing.

Theme Park Scene 5

Since my last update, I have made some alterations to the disc primitive that give it a centre point. From here, I was able to create a cone primitive to be used as the roof of the carousel. I have also improve efficiency by removing the normal calculations from the disc, and simply looped through all of the vertices and assigned them to Y 1. This prevents a considerable amount of unnecessary computation taking place. I have also created a 'ring' and 'hoop' primitive. The ring is flat, the same as a disc, however has a hole of customizable size in the centre. The hoop is a 3D implementation of the ring, using two ring primitives for the top and bottom surfaces. However, my normal calculations algorithm does not yet work properly for rings or cones, and this is what I will be working on next.

The normals for the cone primitive on the roof make it appear black.

The centre point of the disc primitive can be seen in wireframe mode.

Theme Park Scene 4

I have successfully added a Cylinder primitive to my program. The cylinder primitive contains two disc primitives which are used to approximate a circle for the top and base of the cylinder. From here, the cylinder allocates the top and bottom vertex, then bottom and top vertex around the discs for each face. The number of faces the cylinder has can be defined in the constructor, meaning you can get various levels of smoothness. It also means the class can be used to create prisms, passing three as the number of base points for example will produce a triangular prism. From here, I can use the disc and cylinder class as a basis to build both cones and quarter cylinders (to be used as corners on a go-kart track). I can also produce cylinders with no top face to be used as park bins, and I can also begin to model lights to go around the park. Below are some screenshots of the cylinder class being used.

A cylinder with 32 base points. Any more than 32 base points means that the indices being drawn will have to use negative values, as GLbyte is being used as the type for vertex indices.

A cylinder with 64 base points. This means 256 vertices for the central faces, plus 128 for the top and bottom discs,
a total of 512 vertices.

More vertices mean a more expensive computation when generating the cylinder, but do improve it's smoothness.

A triangular prism made by passing three as the number of base points.

Theme Park Scene 3

Today, I have added a river to the scene. The river is created by being given four initial points as it's corners, and then this quad is subdivided using a recursive member function. The number of subdivisions can be altered via a parameter passed to the class' constructor. Each vertex is then given a random height. In order to get the river to update when the camera was not moving, I had to make use of GLUT's idle function in order to re-calculate the river's vertices and normals on each frame. This meant that I also had to call redisplay on each frame, and so at the moment all geometry is being redrawn every single frame. This is not the most efficient way of going about animating the river, but it will stay in place for the time being. Every time the river is updated, it is subdivided again. However, I wish to change this and simply generate new heights for each existing vertex inside a separate function. This will make the program more efficient. Below are some images of the river, along with an image in wireframe mode so that the subdivision of the surface can be seen.

Below is a video that shows the river as it re-generates it's vertices to create a basic water effect. It is in no way a uniform or highly realistic effect, but it works for now. Video is low quality due to the screen capture software and upload process, however when in wireframe mode the subdivisions can be seen moving.

Theme Park Scene 2

Continuing my work on the Theme Park scene, I have been attempting to add a Cylinder primitive. In order to do so, I have also created a Disc primitive to be used inside the cylinder primitive. However, I am having trouble defining a draw order for the vertices that make up the faces between the rings, and have been getting some strange results from my algorithms. My intention was to use the existing vertices in the discs to create quad surfaces between each four points. I will continue work on the cylinder primitive at another time. Some pictures of the results are below.

I have also modelled a small ring toss stand to go in the park, displayed below. This is yet to be complete, as I need a cylinder primitive to finish it.

I have also modified the scene's lighting to make it brighter. In true christmas spirit, I also intend to add a 'Christmas' mode to the Theme Park, which will change the ground to snow and spawn snowmen at various locations around the scene. If I have time before the deadline, I will also add a basic snow effect.

My final addition in this update is the ability to move the camera up and down on the Y axis. However, the camera does not rotate on it's X axis, so it does not fly freely as of yet.

Theme Park Scene 1

I am currently developing a Theme Park scene as part of a Graphics Programming module at University. We are using OpenGL and C++. Thus far, I have a basic class structure that allows me to inherit from a 'Primitive' class, which allows me to easily create primitive shapes such as cubes or tetrahedrons. Vertex normal calculations and texture mapping is black boxed by the Primitive class, all the derived class' constructor needs to do is define the vertices, texture mapping coordinates and draw order for the vertices, all on the constructor's stack and the primitive class creates these in the heap as it's own members. I can also inherit from a Model class, and each model can contain a number of primitives to create it's geometry. The camera also moves and rotates on the XZ plane, however I hope to expand this so that the camera is free to move/rotate in all directions. The following are some screenshots of the scene at present, with a few models implemented.

This bridge will go over a river, which will have a small and very basic ripple effect created using recursive subdivision of a single quad surface.

By my next update, I hope to have implemented an algorithm to allow me to generate circles/curved surfaces in order to create a Cylinder primitive. This will require some modification of the vertex normal calculations as well.

First Post

Hello! This blog is going to be used as a portfolio of my game development work, as well as showing progress on specific projects.