Project Title: Endless Terrain, 3D Graphics
Development: C++ / DirectX
My Role: Graphics Programmer
This project was designed to experiment with the possibilities of 3D Game Graphics, particularly examining the process of generating terrain for world maps. Provided by Adi Bar-Lev and assigned to improve the endless terrain generation process, I needed to go about creating realistic texture, blend, height, and normal maps to accompany the demo. Furthermore, the environment needed to be spruced up with a few different other features to add to the visualization of the world.
The system utilizes a simple fly-by camera to allow navigation, and several user keys enable / disable the normal, textures, and lighting. All basic effects such as the lens flare, lighting, fog, environment mapping, and height coordinates are conducted on the GPU. Lens flare serves to place and adjust the transparency of basic circular textures depending on the viewer's angle toward the light. The lighting provided is based on phong shading and is founded on the supposed direction of the light toward the sun in the sky, thus creating mountains that are only lit when facing the sun. Fog, while simple in terms of calculations, assists the demo in creating distant mountains that realistic fade in / out of view as the user moves around.
Clouds were a last minute addition to the project, and still could utilize some polishing and art improvements to fit better with the environment. While they currently fulfill their roles as billboards that align to the player view, their rough edges take a little away from the realism.
Having little experience with 3D Game Graphics beforehand, this project wound up being a challenge that involved researching and discussing different methods for creating visual effects and then applying it to actual code. With the assistance of Jake Ellenberg and Robert Bethune, we consistently met and discussed the complexities surrounding our experiments in order to continue polishing our demos for presentation purposes.
