I finally got around to posting a video of the current progress. So far the project is going quite swimmingly, if I do say so myself. One thing I want to say is that I am amazed on the sheer power of the GPU’s geometry shader. I had no idea it was able to generate so many vertices at such interactive speeds. Each of the blades that are rendered is being generated procedurally in the geometry shader given only root positions, which is passed in the vertex buffer. Currently I render about 40,000 blades of grass at a solid FPS of 50FPS.

The swaying of the grass is being modeled by simple oscillators such as sine and cosine. There currently is no interaction that the player can have with the grass. However, my next step is to allow the user to affect the wind conditions of the scene. The wind condition vectors will be modeled using Navier-Stokes equations. Hopefully it comes out as cool as I see it in my mind’s eye. Stay tuned.

Above is a video of a particle system driven by fluid dynamics that I developed in conjunction with my dear-old Dominican friend Manny Fernandez. The physics of this application is simulated using Navier-Stokes equations.

The Navier-Stokes equations are really quite groovy because they describe the physical properties behind fluid substances, from water and air currents to the motion of stars swirling inside a galaxy. Navier-Stokes is also used as the basis for weather forecasts. If you are interested in this learning more about this physics trickery, Jos Stam gave a great GDC talk about it.

The particle system application is coded in C++ and uses OpenGL/GLUT to render 40,000 particles. Given the vast amount of particles, we decided to take a multi-threaded approach to fork the work into several threads, with each thread handling a block of particles.

The source code is available for those who are interested. It’s public domain goodness.

[ Source Code ]

Above is a video of the Fembot 3ds-Max model which is being rendered by my 3D-engine. I coded a custom plugin for Autodesk’s 3dsMax that exports 3D models out to my own custom format (XML based). My 3D-engine then reads my custom format and correctly imports it into my engine to be rendered in all its glory.

The model uses simple phong lighting and specular highlights to achieve the glossy look. The yellow-blueish tone is achieved by using the coefficient from the phong lighting (n-dot-L) and interpolating between two colors (yellow and blue); this technique is also known as Gooch shading. According to the Gooch model, colors range from cool tones to warm tones rather than dark to light, thus giving it an appearance of ambient lighting.

[ Large Rendered Image ] 1920×1080 PNG

A man by the name of Alex Varanese once wondered what 8-bit video games might look “in the form of a stop motion animation”. And while most people would just stop at wondering, this dude actually implements it. It’s awesome. Please watch it.

For those of you who do not know, Dock Phillip Ellis, Jr was a Major League Baseball player who pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He is best remembered for the claim that he threw a no-hitter in 1970 while under the influence of LSD. In this video, Dock Ellis recalls what happened that day. Quite amusing.

Here’s a video I captured of a recent class project which emphasized replacing OpenGL’s fixed-function pipeline with custom vertex and fragment shaders. I used low-level assembly ARB language to implement this.

This box shows several shader techniques such as bump-maps, height map parallax, specular highlight and attenuation.

Alex Roman has created an absolutely stunning CGI piece illustrating architecture art from a photographic point of view where main subjects are already-built spaces. Sometimes in an abstract way. Sometimes surreal. It’s absolutely brilliant.

A limerick is a five-line poem which uses the strict form (AABBA). It is often intended to be witty or humorous. In this case, it’s a freakin’ hilarious commentary on a generic Zerg vs Terran match.

[Part 1 | Part 2]

Here is a video of a guy dressed up as an unicorn while holding a samurai sword. Although I am not completely sure, I am just going to go ahead and say that he’s Japanese.

Man, Radiohead is so great.