Project 1:  The CSE 472 2008 Regatta

This document describes the requirements for Project 1 in CSE 472.  The project will be due Wednesday, February 29, 2008 at 11:59pm.  Details on how to turn in the project will follow.  The project is a group project.  Step 5 will begin the project.

Your assignment is to create a graphical regatta and render it.  A regatta is a boat race.  You will create a program that has a group of boats that are racing each other around a buoy. Your program must only present the race, it's not a game; you don't need to have any controls during the race.  Each member of your team is individually responsible for a boat  Your final project must present the boats in a regatta.  The group is responsible for ensuring the boats work together and that a reasonable setting for your regatta exists.  A minimal setting would be water, some sort of starting line, and a buoy or something else for the boats around.  You can create sailboats or power boats.  If your group has both, the powerboats should go faster than the sailboats. 

Each group member is wholly responsible for one boat. Your boat must have the following characteristics:

• A deck.  Your boat must be able to carry people on it and they need a place to stand or sit.  At some point in your boat there must be a floor make to look like wood planks. 
• Four chairs.  Our boat riders get tired very easily and need somewhere to sit sometimes.  The chairs can be the same graphical model (four of the same chair).  Your chair must have a back that is at some angle from the base other than 90 degrees.  Your chair should look appropriate for a boat (A bench or built-in seat is okay instead of a chair if you wish).
• A port hole.  Somewhere on your boat should be a window what people will look out of.  The port hole must be actually transparent, not a picture of a port hole on the surface.  You should be able to see inside the boat through the porthole (you are welcome to just use a texture for your boat interior).
• Some additional graphical object of your own design and choice.  The only requirements are that this object be valid (no missing surfaces), have at least 30 vertices, be multi-colored, and look cool.
• Texture mapping.  You must select and load at least 4 textures in your boat.  I don't care where you use them, as long as they are actually used.  Your group may share some textures to speed up loading time, though each person must have at least one texture unique to their boat.
• Lighting.  You must utilize at least two lights and the lights must be in the scene, not at infinity.
• Some animated component in each boat.  This must be something about the boat that moves.   
• If you do a sailboat, you must have a mast and sails.
• If you do a power boat, you must have a control console with throttles and a steering wheel.

You are not responsible for putting people on your boat.  Consider your competitors to be ghosts.

Your group must create water.  At the very least, your water must be a blue surface with some minimum amount of geometry that looks like the surface of water.  You are not required to make your water transparent, though that is pretty easy to do.  You are not required to create a wake for the boats.  You are not allowed to texture map your water.

You must declare a unit for measurements in your boat.  It can be meters, inches, cubits, yards, nose lengths, or whatever you like, but you must be consistent and everything must be to scale for every boat in your group.  Consider measuring real objects to design your objects.  I've measured real chairs, tables, and windows for this type of project before.

The key for this project is realism.  Try to make your images look as real as possible.  Do not break the laws of gravity (chairs floating in the air or things that could not possibly stand up).  

You must, I repeat, must implement the entire scene as a set of graphical models that are then rendered.  Do not simply draw your room using OpenGL calls!  See Lecture 5 for ideas on creating your own graphical model.  The structure of your graphical model can be based on my examples.  Project 2 will require you to render this same model using a different rendering system, so there must be a clear way to separate the model from the rendering.

Notice:  If you wish to create some alternative image for this project, I will entertain suggestions.  Please email me with a proposal and I will let you know.  Some students in the past have suggested that they would like some "artistic latitude".  

Scene Graphs

You must utilize a scene graph for this project.  The only code I expect to see in OnGLDraw is any setup of your graphics environment, code that modifies your scene graph to accomplish any animation, and a single call to glDraw on the root of your scene graph.  Any projects that are not implemented as a scene graph will be rejected.  You must  utilize the CGrCamera class to make your scene viewpoint easy to manipulate.

Here are some ground rules about scene graphs that must be adhered to:

• Your scene graph must be generic, containing no components that are specific to your project.  Note that you can create generic tools that are very useful in your project. 
• Your scene graph must be able to completely describe the scene without resorting to extra OpenGL code to utilize it.  You must be able to do m_myparade->Render() to render the scene.  I do not want a dozen scene graphs that you then utilize glTranslated() and glRotated() to place.
• Your scene graph must be constructed once and only once!  

When you are done, you will turn in your entire project in a turn-in directory we will specify later.  You will:

• Delete any Debug and Release directories.
• Create a file project1.bmp that is a saved image from your project.
• Create a file project1.txt that has the following information in it:
  • The units you used in your project
  •   A name for your creation
• Create a file userid.bmp for each group member that is an image of their boat in the regatta.

Make a .zip file with all of these files in it and name the file with the name of your group.  If you have to turn in a second time, add a suffix (groupname-2.zip). 

Animation

Your animation must run at exactly the same speed no matter what speed the machine is displaying at.  You must not base the steps in your animation on the frame rate.  Read the system time when you start your animation and for each step compute the animation state based on the elapsed time.  As an example, if you want to slide a table across the room 10 feet in 5 seconds, you should slide it 2 feet each section rather than 0.06 feet each time you redraw.

Pitfalls

When this project is graded, we will be specifically looking for the following problems that you should avoid:

• Missing polygons.
• Overlapping polygons at the same depth.
• Bad vertex normals (yes, we know how to check them)
• Objects which we can see through when we should not be able to see through them.
• Building your entire scene from boxes will result in a 20 point deduction.  No more than 50% of your scene can be built from boxes.
• Time must make sense.  If your boats travel 600MPH or the speed varies on different machines, we'll count off.
• Seams that do not match (lighting and textures).
• Redundant embedded polygons.  I have no problem with a few of these, but if more polygons are embedded in an object such as your floor than are shown, we will penalize.
• Redundant loading or creating of data structures.  Please create your scene graph once and only once.  Especially don't load your textures over and over again.
• Large polygons that prevent the lighting from working properly.

Excellence points will be assigned to projects to indicate just that, excellence.  Up to 3 excellence points will be available on his project.