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CIS 566 Project 1: Noisy Planets

Objective

• Continue practicing WebGL and Typescript
• Experiment with noise functions to procedurally generate the surface of a planet
• Review surface reflection models

Base Code

You'll be using the same base code as in homework 0.

Assignment Details

• Update the basic scene from your homework 0 implementation so that it renders an icosphere once again. We recommend increasing the icosphere's subdivision level to 6 so you have more vertices with which to work.
• Write a new GLSL shader program that incorporates various noise functions and noise function permutations to offset the surface of the icosphere and modify the color of the icosphere so that it looks like a planet with geographic features. Try making formations like mountain ranges, oceans, rivers, lakes, canyons, volcanoes, ice caps, glaciers, or even forests. We recommend using 3D noise functions whenever possible so that you don't have UV distortion, though that effect may be desirable if you're trying to make the poles of your planet stand out more.
• Implement various surface reflection models (e.g. Lambertian, Blinn-Phong, Matcap/Lit Sphere, Raytraced Specular Reflection) on the planet's surface to better distinguish the different formations (and perhaps even biomes) on the surface of your planet. Make sure your planet has a "day" side and a "night" side; you could even place small illuminated areas on the night side to represent cities lit up at night.
• Add GUI elements via dat.GUI that allow the user to modify different attributes of your planet. This can be as simple as changing the relative location of the sun to as complex as redistributing biomes based on overall planet temperature. You should have at least three modifiable attributes.
• Have fun experimenting with different features on your planet. If you want, you can even try making multiple planets! Your score on this assignment is in part dependent on how interesting you make your planet, so try to experiment with as much as you can!

For reference, here is a planet made by your TA Dan last year for this assignment:

Notice how the water has a specular highlight, and how there's a bit of atmospheric fog near the horizon of the planet. This planet used only simple Fractal Brownian Motion to create its mountainous shapes, but we expect you all can do something much more exciting! If we were to grade this planet by the standards for this year's version of the assignment, it would be a B or B+.

Useful Links

• Implicit Procedural Planet Generation
• Curl Noise
• GPU Gems Chapter on Perlin Noise
• Worley Noise Implementations

Submission

Commit and push to Github, then submit a link to your commit on Canvas.

For this assignment, and for all future assignments, modify this README file so that it contains the following information:

• Your name and PennKey
• Citation of any external resources you found helpful when implementing this assignment.
• A link to your live github.io demo (we'll talk about how to get this set up in class some time before the assignment is due)
• At least one screenshot of your planet
• An explanation of the techniques you used to generate your planet features. Please be as detailed as you can; not only will this help you explain your work to recruiters, but it helps us understand your project when we grade it!

Extra Credit

• Use a 4D noise function to modify the terrain over time, where time is the fourth dimension that is updated each frame. A 3D function will work, too, but the change in noise will look more "directional" than if you use 4D.
• Use music to animate aspects of your planet's terrain (e.g. mountain height, brightness of emissive areas, water levels, etc.)
• Create a background for your planet using a raytraced sky box that includes things like the sun, stars, or even nebulae.