threejs-waterfall

Waterfall simulator using THREE.js and TWEEN.js (animation only) libraries. This project is part of "Grafica Computerizzata" course in UNIFE (University of Ferrara), year 2014-2015.

What is this project about

This is a waterfall simulator which uses a particle system to simulate the falling water using physical laws.

Demo

here

Elements

• Environment: The environment consists in a textured skybox with six photos. The biggest object is a grey box geometry with another textured box geometry on top of it whick represents a river. Threre are also some trees (which have been created with sprites). The lake is a blue PlaneGeometry with a water texture applied on it. Fog is also present.

• Lights: The only light in the simulator is a DirectionalLight which simulates the sun. This light hits the main box which reflects some light because it's a PhongMaterial.

• Particle systems: There are two particle systems: The first one represents the falling water from the waterfall, the second imitates the interaction between the falling water and the lake. The first system uses the equations of the projectile motion (even if the initial water speed is low). The motion of these particles is uniformly accelerated because of gAccel. The other system uses a pseudo-random motion with position values of each particle inside defined ranges. In both systems texture, colour and alpha channel (= 0 so that only the significant parts of the particle are displayed, i.e. leaving out the black parts) have been applied.

• Animation: There is a cylinder in front of the waterfall which represents a tree trunk. This mesh is translated and rotated with an animation, in a similar way like the water does. This has been possible using TWEEN.js library.

• Primitive geometries: There are two grey rectangles in the upper part of the waterfall where the water particles come out. These are drawn by defining the twelve points of the four triangles.

• Camera: The user is able to move in the environment using the mouse thanks to OrbitAndPanControls.new.js library.

How to use the source code

Download: $ git clone https://github.com/frnmst/threejs-waterfall.git.

You need:

0. A modern standard compilant html5 and webgl browser (for example GNU Icecat (i.e. Firefox) or Chromium (i.e. Google Chrome) or others like dwb).
1. A modern and "powerful" (maybe multicore) processor (Tests on an Intel Atom N270 netbook failed miserably).
2. A working GPU with its driver is required (if you have an Nvidia GPU, nouveau drivers work just fine).
3. Finally you need to enable webgl on your browser.

To run you just need to open main.html with your browser.

License

Copyright (C) 2015, 2016 frnmst (Franco Masotti) franco.masotti@live.com franco.masotti@student.unife.it

threejs-waterfall is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.