Overview

This code represents a years work by myself (Joti Carroll) and Paul Gaze while working at Queensland University of Technology for the Cube project, an installation for a new building recently constructed. We worked on a project called The Reef designed to represent a sample of the diversity of life on the Great Barrier Reef and be engaging to the general public and potential students. After delivering the content QUT agreed to release all of the code generated by the project to the torque open source community.

This video was created by our lead animator Warwick Mellows:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBv4S4ogXdE

Key Features

• TUIO native input integration.

  • GUI touch events.
  • TouchUI 3D picking system and touch events.
  • Basic script level 3D GUI components that are network safe.

• Awesomium integration.

  • GUI web browser.
  • 3D animated texture.
  • Interaction on 3D objects with support for animated skins and UV based mouse and touch events.
  • Javascript integration from c++ and torque script.
  • Text entry support.
  • Emulated mouse from touch events and BETA multitouch support.

• Mosaic Mode.

  • The ability to efficiently render a part of a cameras view with full shadow and post-processing support.
  • Decoupled settings to allow clustered rendering across many computers without major content changes.

• Fish AI

  • optimised collision avoidance.
  • surface detection and swim angle adjustments.
  • complex influence system.
  • schooling.
  • flee.
  • attraction, detraction points.
  • follow.

The Team

Core Team:
Joti Carroll - Lead Programmer / Modeller
Warwick Mellow - Lead Animator / Modeller
Paul Gaze - Programmer
Sean Gobey - Modeller
Sophia Carroll - Researcher / Writer
Ben Alldridge - Researcher / HTML
Sherwin Huang - GUI Design / HTML

Contractors:
Quan Ren - Animator / Modeller
Ariel Chai - Animator / Modeller

Managers:
Dr. Jeff Jones - Project Manager of the Cube
Prof. Michael Docherty - Project Manager of the Reef

Note - The Reef team members are available for hire right now. Send me an email joticarroll@yahoo.com.au.

More About the Reef

Note - this is pasted from my LinkedIn account.

"The Cube" - I was the first member of the team built by Prof. Jeff Jones to design a massive touch screen based visualisation facility at QUT Gardens Point Campus. Andrew Sorenson and I performed early technology evaluation and constructed a blueprint for a scalable clustered rendering solution capable of adapting to the needs and form of the installation. The design ended up consisting of 5 zones, 48 HD Multitouch touch panels, 10 HD projectors and 22 computers with Zeon CPUs and GeForce 690 graphics cards.

"The Reef" - An interactive media experience based on the great barrier reef and designed for the main two zones of the Cube installation, the main attraction space.

Technical Achievement:

The T3D game engine was altered to develop a clustered rendering solution for 12 computers that required no special content alterations to present as one seamless 3D scene and allow for touch interaction from 20 touch screens under full multitouch load. The solution implemented advanced client side processing and optimization of touch events, 3D object interactions and Chrome based web browser UI elements while still presenting a synchronized, consistent 3D view. All rendering features such as differed rendering and post-processing were retained as well as adding an advanced true location listener system for accurate sound processing in the installation space. Also a heavily customised fish AI system too.

Content Achievement:

I helped coordinate and build a 3D coral reef with pixel to pixel texturing over a 21600 pixel wide screen space that's two stories high. It contains more than 20 minutes of believable cinematic content, over 300 interactive AI fish entities of 25 different species and with 38 species in total. The content tries to capture typical and interesting special behaviours to educate as well as entertain. The user can also interact with or touch each animal to retrieve more in-depth information.

Disclaimer

Although this code is freely given and provides a good deal of new functionality, some of it is just plain horrible. When you're working for a deadline and for an installation piece no less, programming crimes are committed and never fixed. I for one make no apologies for this as the project was delivered and functions as intended. I myself have been saved countless hours of learning through the selfless giving of code by others and ask only that this offering is taken in the spirit in which it is given. I would also like to thank GG and the Torque community for providing such a successful environment for independent development over the years and for taking the brave step into the fully open source arena.