Simple 3D graphics project?

Question

I'm looking for some good ideas for a simple 3d graphics program as my final project for an intro to computer graphics class. As for some background information, we'll be using opengl and will have a little over a month to work on it, so nothing too far-fetched. The simpler and "prettier" looking, the better. It does, however, require some sort of interface that the user can interact with (so a very simple game or similar is a good idea) and must be 3D.

My only idea so far is maybe a 3D version of Tetris (google for some examples).

Thanks!

Edit: I ended up going with 3D Tetris. For a less than a month's worth of time, you can see what I came up with here.

Answer 1

i would check panda3d or pygame panda is probably close to what you are looking for, and one idea that always works is to put the user's face in the main character or object. 3d-pong with the player's face? use something unexpected... like a tetris made of burgers instead of bricks.

Answer 2

How about a 3d minesweeper game similar to this one?

Answer 3

Look at http://www.contextfreeart.org/ ... write something similar, but for 3d.

Answer 4

i love little self organising alife apps like boids. they can be fun to code and always benefit from a nice ui, especially 3d ones. user input can modify aspects of the environment as well as moving around/through the environment

Answer 5

I tried to do a 3D Asteroids for a class once. I never completed the gameplay part, since it was a graphics class. The ship could move around, as could the asteroids, but there was no collision detection. The ship and the asteroids had 3D textures applied to them, and the asteroids were built out of ellipsoids, so they were actually 3D. The gameplay was all 2D, though.

Answer 6

How about one of those games that are a wooden maze with a ball rolling around the top. You tilt the board and try to get the ball round the maze without falling down the hole? It has the advantage that it's relatively simple to get started, but you could probably think of some extensions if you have time.

Answer 7

I like exoplanets. Go read up on them. wikipedia, http://exoplanet.eu, there's a lot of info. Astronomers and public outreach people could always use fresh 3D animations showing how the doppler effect works, or how the planet transiting in front of the star makes it for example 0.5% dimmer. Or, what i work on, is how when the planet passes behind its star, we receive at Earth just a teeny bit less infrared from that star. The user could adjust the orbit, size of planet, etc. and see how that affects what astronomers see. Could be fun, simple enough to do, and unlimited potential in extending the work for nicer textures, slick lighting effects, etc and you could end up with something to contribute to science education.

I'd be making such 3D animations myself, if i weren't busy helping crunch numbers for the actual science. I'll be jealous!

Answer 8

In university, for my parallel programming course, I did an openGL/MPI implementation of Conway's Game of Life. It was quite interesting. Wish I still had the code around somewhere. The advantage of using open GL is that you can lay out the grid in different orientations rather than a flat grid. Remember, code doesn't exist until it's checked into source control.

Answer 9

Rubik's cube.

Answer 10

If you're looking for a true university size task, mine was to produce a small helicopter "game" where you could take off from an aircraft carrier in an ocean and fly around with some environmental effects, moving water etc. i.e. nothing too complicated. As another example, the task set for the year previous to mine was a little sans-opponent racing game.
I would worry that you may loose marks with tetris as it sounds like little would be done on the z-axis and may come across a little too 2d though it obviously depends on your brief.

Anyway, these will give you the chance to experiment with the basic OpenGL features such as fog, lighting, geometry, textures and some basic movement physics & collision detection/response.

Further on this, though often beyond the scope of such a university sized task you could then take this further add nicities such as animated geometry (e.g. people), environment mapping, reflections, shadows, particle systems, shaders, perhaps a heightmapped island.

Answer 11

If you've ever played Missile Command I belive that this could be a good project to '3d-ify'.

Answer 12

Try a chicken crossing the road game.

You will probably need to demonstrate the bare minimum of:

• textures
• lighting
• animation
• interaction
• collision detection

Do not include even simple physics if there are no marks for it. Prioritise tasks based on the marking scheme. Get something simple working first and back it up :)

Answer 13

Rewrite Blocks 3D. The graphics on this project look horrible now. I remember playing this game (or one like it) on a 386 with wireframe graphics... awesome. The game is basically 3D tetris.

Answer 14

Honestly it's actually pretty easy to load up a bunch of animated models and set up a simple first person shooter. I mean, to get a generic thing working you don't need all that much:

• Either load and display a heightmap or a BSP tree as the level.
• Load and render some simple MD2 models (keyframe animation, low amount of polys and simple format).
• Draw a simple hud.
• Ray/AABB intersection, every time the user clicks you'll need to cast a ray from the center of the screen and see if it intersects an the bounding boxes of the enemies.
• Simple FPS camera system.

The above is pretty doable in a month for as far as I'm concerned. (It's probably doable in a week if you already know some of the stuff).