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Revisiting an earlier project, i have now applied the new B-Spline curve to a random fish shape generator. Currently, it only has the body shape and a simple, limited tail fin outline. I'm not quite sure how to triangulate these and turn them into something 3D just yet. That will be the next project.

After reading and rereading the first few chapters of Splines for Use In Computer Graphics and Geometric Modeling, i finally created a simple piecewise cubic B-spline curve (non-interpolated). Here we have a 3-segment curve and a "periodic" closed curve with 4 segments. And it only took me 5 months!

Now that i have vertex normals, i can have decent lighting. I've created a new Light class to work with the geometry data and the recently developed Material class. I've integrated the lights and materials into the Resource Manager which means that i can configure them individually by name in an external config file. How nice!

To facilitate the lighting system, all geometry must have defined vertex normals. I'm designing my system so that you can define your own vertex normals or let the Mesh class do it itself. The first screenshot here is the first attempt of the CreateAutomaticVertexNormals function (normals shown in green). It turns out the algorithm was fine, i was just inputting the triangle data incorrectly to start with. The second screenshot shows manually (mathmatically) defined normals for this geometrically simple form.

Since i'm snowed in for the week in the worst snowstorm in 40 years, i'm getting some of the less interesting things out of the way. I've been working on getting basic support for 3D meshes up and running so that i don't have to process everything manually. Work has been done on classes for Vertexes, Indexed Triangles, 3D Meshes, and the general Rendering Layer and graphics processing. The goal is to more or less consolidate all the graphics processing in (mostly) one place in the code. It's still rudimentary, but way more flexible than doing things by hand. I could, in theory, start loading static 3D models from files, but that is not my goal.

What happens when i put the Camera class together with the new 3D Spline Curve class? A nice little rollercoaster! I added derivitive calculations to the spline class which let me know which direction the curve is pointing at any given point. Using this information, i can put a "camera" on the curve and then move it along at a constant speed for a cool first-person effect. I also created a remote-viewer demo with a cube sliding along the curve and the camera tracking it's every move through space.

Taking the boring spline math and putting some prettiness on it results in experiments like these colorful "Spline Florettes," technically created from a 3D spline curve with random control points used as the basis for creating an OpenGL triangle fan. Throw in some additive blending and cycling colors and you've got yourself a dandy little screensaver!

Cubic bezier curves are nice by themselves and they do make you feel smart when you say the name, but the real goal is the spline curve which is made from a series of bezier curves chained together and smoothed out. The code and math to create one of these is a bit more complex than Ye Old Bezier Curve. It requires understanding of quite a few mathmatical concepts i did not previously know. Now i have a nice spline curve class to play with.

For my next trick, i'll be creating a bezier curve. This will be a key component of the procedural modeling concept. After much reading a rereading, i was finally able to produce this simple cubic bezier curve. You can see it has 4 control points which determine the actual curve. The other points are sub-calculations you would understand if you knew much about the topic. For you, they just look pretty.