Assignment 2: Shading

CMSC 491G/691G, Fall 2007

Due Thursday, September 27, 2007

Assignment

Each of you will choose one object from my box of fun materials. You should first analyze the features of your object that make it look the way it does, including color, texture, surface geometry, transparency, specularity, interaction with light or the environment, etc. Create a real-time shader that captures the look of your object as closely as possible. Note that your choice of model and environment can greatly influence the impression of your shader's appearance. You can use OpenSceneGraph for this assignment but do not have to.

691G students

In addition to the realistic component, add an other-worldly throbbing internal glow. You can decide what that glow looks like and how it interacts with the object appearance, but it should interact with the object appearance, and not just mix between glowing and not-glowing. If you are using OpenSceneGraph, there is a uniform float named osg_FrameTime that you can use in your shader to create time-varying effects.

What to turn in

You will submit your work to a cvs repository on the gl.umbc.edu systems. Submit a few sample screen shots or a captured animation, long with your project source only. I do not want your intermediate build files, executables, copies of OSG, or other stuff I can get or build myself. Do include necessary texture or model files. I recommend checking in working or partially working files early and often. For Windows users, FIPS is an effective tool for capturing animation, but by default produces very large uncompressed captures. If you do capture animation, please re-encode with a compressed codec!

Also, check in a readme.txt file telling me

  1. What object did you have?
  2. What appearance features did you notice, from most important to least important (this list should go farther than your shader does, including at least a couple of things past what your shader implements)?
  3. Which of those appearance features did you attempt to replicate in your shader, and by what shading methods.
  4. What external sources and samples did you use?

If you need your quota increased (now, or at any time during the semester), let me know.