9 May 2016

This is the first progress update of our final project and we are currently in progress on the modelling of multiple 3D models, 7 to be exact. These models include a few islands, the ocean water, the trees and the train in addition to it’s cargo.

Some of these models currently do not have colour because of the our lack of understanding on the colouring mechanisms in blender.

The current train model may be revised as we have discovered a better train model that we have as reference.

During our lab classes we are still learning the three.js framework however there might be a possibility of us using the babylon.js instead. We will decide further after learning more of both.

 

 

18 May 2016

New updates this week includes a new train model including it’s train tracks, we have dropped the model of the water due to the difficulty and problems it would create when animating and instead used the framework to create the water instead. We have successfully coloured the models so we are able to start importing it into the scene. We have come to the conclusion of using the babylon framework because it seems that there are a number of reference sites and forums regarding problems.

 

 

26 May 2016

Updates for this last week was figuring out the hurdle of not being able to import the mesh onto webGL has been surpassed we are starting to slowly place each asset within the scene, however the problems of the meshes colouring arises instead. There were a lot of confusing explanation from the babylon tutorials at times that resulted in a loss of understanding and use of the code.

New models this week such as

 

2 June 2016

From our previous update our project has leaped through many obstacles however there are still a gradual increase of new problems due to the confusing programming on the webGL frameworks. We have already begun the animation after some trouble with the code and all we need to do is animate the train, boat and the people of IIS.

There were multiple revisions on alot of meshes including the islands.

6 June 2016

The last and final update to our Interactive Island Simulator. There has been a huge change from the previous update which has included the new island placements and additional meshes of trains, rails + bridge, people and ships. There are more interactive animations from all these new imports to try out as well as an environmental animation.

Here are a few screenshots from our final project.

 

There were many difficulties that had to be overcome to create this project. The many hurdles included the our own assets where there was difficulty with origin points in the islands, when importing a .obj or .babylon file that had more than one shape to create the object there were problems such as not knowing which part is in which array of loadedMeshes[x].

Here was an example of one of our trees. I believe that the small particles gathering within an small area was the problem. The maximum number of trees that could be spawned together was 3 and adding more resulted in the error page above.

Matching the distance and angle that the train will travel was a very tedious and time consuming, what I believe to be one of the most impressive feats of animation I have to be honest. I would like to add more meshes and models however the have been many problems including the lag spikes that would occur or even errors that would arise when running. Whenever I worked on this specific final project my computer the temperature would rise from the heat it produces.

This project has been a tiresome obstacle leaping journey where our some of our original plan was unable to be achieved to due errors we could not understand nor troubleshoot. One idea was that instead of our buttons we would click on the meshes however it never worked no matter how many times various methods we applied from research.

If we had to give credit to this project, the original models and their colouring can be credited to Jonathan Wibowo whereas the coding of the animations and the GUI would be credited to both Jeremy Jodi and myself. It does not however justify that we have not done work in each others job field.

Another unusual unsolvable problem is the errors that arise when loading object files, there does not seem to have any problems on the scene but it seems the problem comes from the additional framework that was supposed to assist in the insertion of .obj models.

 

Please take a look at our demo video at