Week 1

Goal: Finalize Geometry/ Coloring & Simple Animation

Grass, Egeria Densa, Barclaya Longfolia, driftwood, and simple sand floor created. Plants "sway" and users can use the GUI to change height, density, spacing of plants.

create_ring(), fill_ring_pole() (& fill_ring_fan()), extrude_ring(), CatmullRom Splines (SplineVec3), and create_ring_spline() implemented. Final result is function that takes in spline for scale and position, outputs manifold mesh of extruded rings, with poles used to fill ends.

Next steps for Week 2:

• Add noise function to map where plants appear in the tank.
• Ensure plants don't drift outside of the tank "wall"
• Ensure elements in tank don't intersect with each other (realism!)
• Add fish house element and update simple sand floor to be a sand -> gravel slider.
• Continue developing tools to create fish geometry

Milestone 1: Implementation part 1 (due 11/12)

Becca's Reflection:

So far, I’ve focused on getting the core pieces in place, even if the visuals are still a bit rough:

• Tank + camera
• Orbit camera with zoom, damping, and reset.
• Responsive canvas that resizes with the window.

Procedural tank floor

• WebGL floor mesh with heightfield “sand” noise.
• The floor exposes its params (amp / scale / yOffset) so other systems can sit nicely on top of it.

Plant system

• Instanced grass blades with per-instance base position, height, phase, sway amplitude, and hue.
• Additional plant layers blocked out: egeria and barclaya, each with their own regenerate() and parameter sliders.

Decorations (first pass)

• Driftwood generators that respect the collision grid.

What’s still very WIP:

• The shaders are mostly utilitarian right now—lighting and fog work, but the materials are flat.
• Interaction is minimal (mostly camera + parameter sliders).

What’s giving me trouble?

• Balancing collision spacing vs. density: if I’m too strict, the tank feels empty; if I’m too loose, objects intersect.
• Designing APIs for each layer so it can share state (tank bounds, floor offset, collision info) without everything becoming spaghetti.

Gavin's Reflection

So far, I have:

• developed basic tools needed to procedurally model fish
• created a catalog of drawings of fish body parts/anatomy

What’s giving me trouble?

• Fish geometry will be much more time consuming than originally planned

How should I Change my approach?

• Simplify/downgrade planned variety
• Accept that my progress may not be as visible until later on in the project