Tornado Simulation
Filed under Projects
This simulation was developed during my second year at the University of Teesside for my Visual Simulation module as part of my Computer Games Programming degree.
The requirements were to create a flexible simulation of a tornado using data files to control the scene.
The simulation contains two particle systems, one for the tornado and one for the precipitation (either rain or snow). Depending on the information in the scene files the following can be changed in the associated XML files:
- Camera – Can be animated or user controlled. The scene file contains camera speed and animation parameters.
- Config – Screen size, simulation update speed, background colour.
- Cube – The colour and shape of the cube in the scene.
- Lighting – Allows up to seven lights in the scene. Each light has an ambient, diffuse, specular and positional properties. There are also optional spot light parameters and animation parameters.
- Precipitation – Allows either rain or snow. The file contains maximum number of particles to use, overall size of the weather system and the speed/velocity of the particle system.
- Pyramid – Controls the shape, colour and size of the pyramid.
- Pyramid Keyframes – Contains the keyframes for the pyramid to follow in the simulation using simple time based keyframe animation.
- Terrain – Controls the position of the centre of the terrain with an option to set two colour for a chequered terrain.
- Tornado – Contains the initial position, maximum height, particle size, maximum umber of particles, speed, intensity, radius, height step for the particles, and colour. This file also controls the bezier curves for the tornado to follow.
The only known issue with this simulation is that when the tornado transitions from one bezier curve to another the camera ‘jumps’ for a split second before continuing as normal.
If for any reason the video fails to play please use this direct link to see the video on youtube.
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Jul29