The Helicopter Screensaver & Bouncing Creatures

Last Tuesday we had to present our screensaver for Motion & Modeling. Our group, consisting of Jelle Galgenbeld, Dmitri Kazachkov, and me, have developed a screensaver where a helicopter tries to take down soldiers on the ground. These soldiers in turn try to reach an anti-air gun, located at the opposite side of the screen. When all soldiers have manned this anti-air weaponry, it will shoot into the air, and when it hits the helicopter, it will spin down to the ground and explode, resetting the screensaver.

Before the helicopter can shoot though, it first has to detect a soldier on the ground. The helicopter will then track this soldier, indicated by the red colour of the floodlight, continuously firing at him until he dies or reaches the anti-air equipment. All soldiers will keep on respawning until they reach the anti-air gun, so in the end the helicopter will always be brought down. To keep things interesting the soldiers get a random speed every time, so you never know in advance whether a soldier will reach the other side.

During our presentation, which you can find here, we have shown the different stages of the development of the screensaver we have been trough. The first step was to make a helicopter that flies from one side of the screen to the other side, and back again, since the helicopter is the most important element of our screensaver. After having accomplished this, we gave the helicopter the ability to shoot. In our first implementation of shooting, the helicopter started shooting at a fixed x-position, thus always hitting the same soldiers on the ground, who at that time were represented by blue balls that turn green when hit.

One step beyond that was to make the soldiers on the ground able to move, so the helicopter has live targets to shoot at. If a soldiers walks in the floodlight of the helicopter, the helicopter will target this man, indicated by a green orb around the soldier. Because we wanted to improve the floodlight, we made it able to actively track down the soldier that had walked trough it. This change causes the helicopter to follow a targeted victim and shoot at it until it dies or reaches the anti-air gun.

In the end we put all these development steps together, along with animations for the walking soldiers and animations for the flying & exploding helicopter and last but not least some atmospheric music: the Airwolf theme! I hope to be able to show these development steps by the end of the week.

Another thing we had to finish last week was the first end assignment for “Programming for CreaTe”, where we had to display our animal designed for the course 20 times, and they had to be able to bounce into each other. You can see my version on my portfolio website.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to work on my portfolio last week, so you will be updated on the improvements another time.

Do you wanna B-U-M-P?

Last week we discussed Matrices in Motion & Modelling. To demonstrate how they can be used, our teacher showed us how a simple screensaver, in which a ball flies to a wall, and bounces off of it, can be created using them.

This week we discussed Ordinary Differential Equations, which are one level higher in abstraction than formula's: they basically give you a formula of a formula.

We also have a starting point for the screensaver we will make for the final assignment. In the screensaver, a helicopter fires at people on the ground, and it will hit the person that is closest to the foreground. To spice things up a bit we also want to add an Anti-Air cannon, controlled by the men on the ground, used to demolish the 'copter. The question is of course: who will win, the Anti-Air cannon or the helicopter? For decoration purposes we want to included trees that change depending on which season it is. To us it seems this plan can be realised in Processing within the given time frame in 2D, but in the project meeting this week our teacher actually asked us to try it in 3D as well. We will first think about all the formula's needed to get this to work, and demonstrate that in 2D, and when there is time left, we will make the transition to 3D.

Motion & Modelling week 1 + 2

The course I haven't introduced you to yet is Motion & Modelling, in which we learn about different mathematical theories that we later on put to use by creating a screensaver. In the first week, we have learned about manipulating functions (shifting them up & down, left & right, making them bigger & smaller) and about differentiation and integration. In the second week we have learned how to work with Matlab, a program designed for mathematical computing but also suited for animation purposes. For the screensaver I have teamed up with Dmitri Kazachkov and Jelle Galgenbeld. We're not entirely sure what kind of screensaver we want to make, we will decide on that next week.

Also, it's weekend again, so time for some nice music. I recently found out that the music to the song "Ain't No Mountain High Enough", performed by, amongst others, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrel, is also used by Amy Winehouse, but with totally different lyrics, for the track "Tears Dry On Their Own". You can watch both of them below. Enjoy!

Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell - Ain't No Mountain High Enough


Amy Winehouse - Tears Dry On Their Own