CMSC 435/634: Introduction to Computer Graphics

Assignment 5
Viewing Pipeline
Due November 4, 2002

The Assignment

For this assignment, you will be modifying your last assignment to drive an amphibious vehicle on and around your island. You will replace the former parallel projection with a perspective projection from the point of view of the vehicle. You will replace the mouse motion handler with a new one that maps horizontal mouse motion to turning left and right and vertical mouse motion to moving the vehicle forward and backward in the direction it is currently pointing. For a given x,z position of the vehicle, you will determine its y position as a fixed distance above the island or sea at that point. Finally, you will tilt the view to align with the surface at that point. All aspects of the vehicle's view should be done on the OpenGL projection matrix stack (glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION)). This could be done in the mouse motion handler, but the extra credit will be easier if you set view parameters in the mouse motion handler and create the projection matrix in your draw function.

If your assignment 4 did not work, you can get a working sample version from me or Dr. Rheingans after you have turned in your final version of assignment 4. However, I would encourage you to start from your own assignment 4 code if at all possible.

You may find the following OpenGL calls helpful to complete the assignment:

Strategy

Plan ahead first. Know how you're going to find the position, height, and orientation of the view. Don't forget to account for cases when the vehicle is outside of the x/z region covered by the island or when the island surface dips below sea level (in both cases, you should float above the water surface). Once you have a plan, implement in stages. For example, you might get perspective viewing working first, then add the steering, then movement, then find the right height for your position, and finally tip the view to align with the island slope.

Extra credit (for everyone)

Add some fun additional animated vehicle motion. Some possibilities are bobbing up and down when on water, smoothly changing view orientation over several frames as you move from triangle to triangle rather than abruptly snapping from one orientation to another, or making the vehichle slide down in the direction of steepest descent if it drives onto an area with slope steeper than (say) 30 degrees. You're welcome to come up with other ideas too -- be creative.

You animate motion by making changes incrementally over several frames. Normally, GLUT only calls your draw function if something changes. However, if you call glutPostRedisplayinside your draw function, it will cause GLUT to call your draw function again for a new frame as soon as the current frame is complete. For example, to smoothly change view orientation, you might have a current orientation and target orientation. If these don't match, make a change limited to (say) no more than 10 degrees per frame. Draw with the changed value, but if the current and target orientations are still not the same, call glutPostRedisplay to take another step next frame.

635 required / 435 extra credit

Do all of the matrix manipulations yourself, using only one glLoadMatrix to set the final result. I would recommend getting the base project working using the OpenGL matrix functions, then replace them incrementally. You will get more credit for a working program that makes partial use of glLoadMatrix or glMultMatrix than a completely non-working program that uses only glLoadMatrix. As extra credit, this is worth a maximum of 5 points (yes, I know it's not very many points, but it's not very hard -- look at the man pages for the OpenGL transformation functions).

What to turn in

Turn in this assignment electronically as 'cs435 Proj5' (or after the due date as Proj5late) using the submit mechanism: 
    submit cs435 Proj5 [files...]
The usual assignment boilerplate still applies -- submit all files you've created or modified; we must be able to build and run on the GL systems to grade, if you develop elsewhere leave sufficient time to port back; comments are your friend and ours, they're a good idea and they can improve your grade. In either case, you should all files that you created or modified.

References

As a reminder, the irix machines include all of the OpenGL man pages (you don't have to be sitting at one, you can just 'ssh irix.gl.umbc.edu'). Just try 'man glFrustum', etc. to find out more about any function used in the assignment that sparks your curiosity. Also, the OpenGL 1.1 Programmers Guide (the "OpenGL red book") is available online, and is a good reference