CMSC 110 (Introduction to Computing)

Spring 2011

Assignment#6

Due before start of class on Thursday, April 12, 2011
Due before start of class on Thursday, April 14, 2011

Task:  Design and implement an animated pseudo three-dimensional scene.  Create a sense of depth by reducing the size and linear velocity of objects that are farther away from the viewer.

Encapsulate all graphic objects in a custom class of your own design with a method that draws the object on the sketch.  The drawing functions in your object's draw method must render your object at a fixed location. Do not move or size your object by changing the parameter values of your object's drawing functions. All object animation must be generated by scaling, translating, and rotating the coordinate system prior to drawing each object.

Your sketch must include examples of all three transformations: scale, translate, and rotate.


Here are some ideas to get you started:

• A long hallway filled with bouncing and rotating balls. The farther a ball is from the viewer, the smaller it appears and the slower it bounces.
• A birdseye view of leaves falling from a tree. Leaves fall to ground, rotating and getting smaller as they fall.
• A scene on a moon of Saturn where extraterrestrial insects with rotating propellers race across a lake of methane. The farther the insect is from the viewer, the smaller it appears and the slower it moves.
• A large rotating whirlpool that swallows anything dropped into it. Objects start by slowly rotating about the center of the whirlpool at a large radius, but increasingly speed up and shrink in size as the they get closer to the center of the whirlpool, before being swallowed up entirely. 

What to Hand in:

• Copy the entire sketch folder to your Dropbox folder.
• Make sure to name the sketch file/folder properly.
• Include the standard header in your source code.
• Write a paragraph/description and include it in the header of the main source code file for your sketch.
• Comment your code liberally with meaningful statements that help explain what your code is doing.

Hints:

• Keep it simple at first.  Start with something basic, get it working, and then build upon it piece by piece, each time ensuring it is working before you move on to the next piece.
• Start with a hand-drawing of what you want.
• START EARLY!!!  I cannot emphasize this enough.