CS 418 – Logo MP

In this MP you will

  1. Make a 2D model by hand
  2. Display the model using WebGL2
  3. Animate the model using a matrix

This MP is core, with no elective components. It assumes you have already completed the WebGL warmup.

1 Overview

University of Illinois Logo
University of Illinois Logo

You will submit a webpage that has

  • One canvas
  • A 2D animation of the majestic and inspiring University of Illinois logo

Submit an HTML file and any number of js, css, glsl, and json files. No image files are permitted for this assignment. Do not include spaces in file names as the submission server does not process them well.

You are welcome to use a JavaScript math library, such as the one used in in-class examples or others you might know.

2 Specification

2.1 HTML file

Submit one HTML file.

Including DOCTYPE, lang, charset, and title.

Have at least one script element in the head, and none outside the head.

Have one canvas element.

2.2 Coding

Draw using a webgl2 context.

Use requestAnimationFrame to animate the canvas at the browser’s natural frame-rate. This should begin as soon as the page has loaded, requiring no user action to start.

Code following our recommended practices. In particular, if you put wrapWebGL2.js in the same directory as your HTML file and include <script src="wrapWebGL2.js"></script> before any other <script ...> element there should be no warnings or errors displayed in the console (except perhaps an error about not finding favicon.ico1).

Use readable coding style. In particular,

  • Break work into reasonable chunks, either as functions with meaningful names (preferred) or using whitespace and comments to separate parts of computation.

  • Comments should follow the Google JS commenting style. At a minimum, have a comment preceding each function, preferably in JSDoc style; additional comments are also encouraged.

2.3 Graphics

Make a reasonable polygonal approximation of the University of Illinois logo. No need to model the curves where the vertical bar meets the serifs.

According to the Office of Strategic Marketing and Branding, the logo has RGB 255/95/5, which converted to 0–1 colors used by WebGL is (r,g,b) = (1, 0.373, 0.02). Sometimes the logo has a blue outline; if you wish to do that it should be RGB 19/41/75 meaning (r,g,b) = (0.075, 0.16, 0.292).

You should create this model by hand, such as by drawing the logo on graph paper. The by-hand requirement isn’t something we’ll even try to enforce or grade, but doing it that way will help build your brain’s ability to convert between shapes and coordinates, a valuable skill in graphics.

A process for creating 2D models by hand
  1. Draw the shape on graph paper
  2. Put a bold dot at each corner of the shape
  3. Number the points in any order, starting with 0
  4. Pick an origin and scale for the graph paper
  5. Create an array of vertices in numbered order, using coordinates from the graph paper
  6. Fill in a triangle on the graph paper and add the number of its three vertices to the triangles index array
  7. Repeat step 6 with another triangle, and then another, until the entire shape is filled in

WebGL displays things between -1 and +1 in x and y. If you modeled the logo with different bounds, you can adjust it in the vertex shader as e.g. by finding a scaling factor s and offsets dx and dy and using them as

gl_Position = vec4(vert.x*s + dx, vert.y*s + dy, 0, 1);

The logo should move about the canvas because its vertex positions are being modified by a matrix that varies with time. This means

  • having a uniform mat4 in your vertex shader (and no other uniforms in the vertex shader)
  • assigning the matrix a new value each frame to create the desired motion

Your animation should look smooth (no sudden jumps from one image to another), should keep the logo constantly moving and mostly on-screen, and should do at least two of

  • moving the logo
  • rotating the logo
  • changing the logo’s size

Do not squish or stretch the logo: any size changes should be uniformly applied to all dimensions.

3 Evaluating your results

On both your development machine and when submitted to the submission server and then viewed by clicking the HTML link, the resulting animation should show a moving I logo. One example motion might be the following:

A video of an example result.