Fractal Terrain Project

Inspiration

Ibrahim did a lot of projects with regards to fractals and math, and so because we all wanted to learn how to program 3D environments we decided to go with this project.

What it does

It generates a whole bunch of mathematical objects

How we built it

We originally wrote this in C++ using OpenGL libraries, but due to much of our code not working we transferred at the last minute to a C# equivalent, using one of our teammates' old projects from high school.

Challenges we ran into

Our main issue was getting our 3D environment working, we spent most of the time learning about OpenGL rather than actually programming it due to the amount of issues we got.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We got a 3D environment working! It took 3D and a whole lot of grit and late nights but it was managed eventually.

What we learned

OpenGL is a vast and dangerous realm to be in, it will require more than 3 days to fully learn it.

What's next for Fractal Terrain Project

Figuring out a better interface is our top priority, and getting our random noise generators down.

Built With

c#
opentk

Submitted to

BeaverHacks - Winter 18

Created by

I had trouble wrapping my head around the OpenGL aspects of this project, so I elected to focus on the abstract and math-heavy tasks.

I made the initial functions in C++ to convert a pixel's data stored in the struct HSV (Hue/Saturation/Value) to a struct triangle, with three struct points we could work with.

Then, I challenged myself to figure out the post-processing effects we needed, such as how to implement Gaussian Blur, in order to assist in creating the fractals we planned to make. However, the code and seemed just slightly beyond me, taking nearly a day just to get an idea what to do. In the end, I had a rough idea how to implement this, but did not end up creating a function we could use.

My last task was creating a function which added Simplex or Perlin noise to the bitmap structure we were using. Though the math behind both is much beyond me, the actual implementation of the noise was fairly simple, and there were plenty of open source resources to guide me along, and I made a function to add noise to the bitmap structure we were using.

Though my overall contributions were slim, I did learn a lot about how post-processing effects are implemented and streamlined, such as blur, noise addition, and auto-contrast. After this hackathon, I now feel comfortable explaining Gaussian and Simplex noise to someone.

Michael
I did a littl bit of everything: our goal was to create a C++ OpenGL 3D environment where the input is a bitmap image, and the output is a collection of triangles/quads that represent a natural looking terrain. None of us used OpenGL with C++ before, and because of its complexity it took us almost two days to get a working window. In this time, I mainly worked on the OpenGL environment, Aeijan mainly worked on the image generation, and Michael worked on the terrain generation from the image. On Sunday, we acknowledged that we don’t know why our 3D environment isn’t showing all our triangles, and we didn’t understand the concept of “shaders”, and so I pulled up an old C# project of mine that plots math equations and heavily modified it to include our code. I converted all of our math to C#, and created a new “TerrainMap” class in “Plot.cs” that converts an image to a collection of triangles. I had to modify a lot of my original peoject to include this, but it got our code working and presentable in the end.

I learned that OpenGL is a vast and expansive topic to program in, and none of us were expecting it to take several days just to get a normal window working. I am going to use the rest of my break to actually understand the C++ code in hopes of using this for future projects and hackathons. I enjoyed learning about this, even if it was the most frustrating piece of work I’ve ever done.

Ibrahim Mahmoud
Aeijan Bajracharya

Updates

Ibrahim Mahmoud started this project — Dec 16, 2018 09:27 PM EST

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