CPE471 Final Project
![](images/preview.gif)
For my final project in CPE 471, I chose to focus on creating an interesting scene. I combined multiple techniques learned in the class, including alpha masking, skyboxing, texture blending, and phong shading, as well as other techniques to create the water.
Effects Breakdown
Reflection
![](images/reflect.jpg)
To create the reflection, I rendered the scene upside down by applying a mirror matrix to all of my shapes, and clipped the scene at the y = 0 plane. The image was rendred to a texture to be used in the water shader. I took the texture, and sampled a noisy map plus a time offset to produce offset values. I used those values to offset where I sampled from the prerendered scene texture to create the ripply effect. Finally, I sampled a normal map to help me compute the frensel term, the ratio of reflected light to refracted light.
Refraction
![](images/refract.jpg)
To create the refracted scene, I had to render the scene right side up, and clip objects above the y=0 plane. The scene was once again rendred to a texture. This new texture was blended with the reflection texture to create a more realistic water image. The color of the was multiplied by the color of the water to produce the illusion of depth. Without refraction, the water loses depth, and becomes a wavy mirror. For more information on implementing this shader yourself, head to https://ericpacelli.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/realistic-water-in-opengl-and-glsl/
Grass
![](images/grass1.jpg)
To add more depth to my scene, I researched techniques to add fields of grass. I settled on a mix between a technique that was both reasonable to implement, and performed well. The grass is rendered by taking a dynamically built mesh that looks like three rectangle arranged in a star pattern. The shader itself reads off of an alpha map, and discards fragments with a value of zero. The color of the grass was determined by the texture lookup coordinate. The base of the grass is more blue than the top. Were I to implement this again, I would attempt to get true alpha blended grass. I had issues getting the blend order right, and went with the easy, but ineffeciant solution.
Skybox
![](images/skybox.jpg)
The skybox code is based off of class code. However, I modified the code to make it easier to generate and modify the texture. I also had to tweak the shaders to allow for inversions, since I had to render the skybox upside down. Since the texture lookup was based on the normal vector, I mirrored the model matrix while maintaining the original normals.
Sources
Reflection and Refraction normal, dudv maps and shader technique: https://ericpacelli.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/realistic-water-in-opengl-and-glsl/
Skybox Image: http://www.redsorceress.com/skybox.html
Grass technique: GPUGems Chapter 7. http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems/gpugems_ch07.html
Grass texture: http://i.imgur.com/YzzRt.png