How to do free-directional tunnels

@DrWatson

Published in 

atari

 · 26 Nov 2023

by BlackAxe / KoLOr 1997

In the latest demos (in almost every demo from Assembly97) you see those funny free-directional tunnels, namely tunnels where you can move how you want and perform complex camera movements.

Many people in iRC asked me how to do such a tunnel, so instead of wasting phone costs and explaining it online i decided to write this little tute. In fact, this effect is kinda easy to do, but unlike normal, old, silly tubes it doesn't work with those silly lookup tables (darn, I hate lookup tables :-)), but in fact it's realtime raytraycing. Realtime Raytraycing?? Isn't that slow? No, there are some tricks to make it possible in realtime. Well, let's start with a little introduction to raytraycing.

1.) Raytraycing, the basics

In fact, raytraycing is a very easy algorithm, many people think it's hard as hell, because one get's good quality pictures out of it, but the basics are easy. Performing refractions, reflections and other complex things is a bit more advanced, but the basics are very very easy, everyone that knows a bit math should understand it.

Well, basically the algorithm consists of shooting a ray through each pixel of the screen and check for intersections of this ray with objects in the scene. Let's start with the equation of a ray. A ray is defined as

Origin.x = 0; 
Origin.y = 0; 
Origin.z = -128;

now we shoot the ray through that pixel:

Direction.x = Pixel.X; 
Direction.y = Pixel.Y; 
Direction.z = 128; 
Direction.Normalize();

of course you can take something different for Z, that's your decision. Note: The midmost pixel of the screen muts be (0,0), so if you work in 320x200 you first have to substract 160 of X and 100 of Y (or 320 resp. 240 when you work in 640x480). And don't forget to normalize the Direction (if you don't know how to normalize a vector, first check a vector tutorial like ZED3D), hmm, well, here's the little function to normalize a vector for all you dummies :-))

void Vector::Normalize() 
{ 
  float len = sqrt(x*x + y*y + z*z); 
  x /= len; 
  y /= len; 
  z /= len; 
}

Now you have your ray, and you need to check for intersections. For that, you need to find t (of course, because you know the rest :-)). Then you have

2.) Doing the raytraycing for the tunnel

Think! What is a tunnel?? A tunnel is a cylinder, a simply silly cylinder. And what is a cylinder??? A cylinder is a set of circles on a straight line. Each Z coordinate has a circle. So it's just circles for each Z :-) Now we have to find the intersection between our ray and the correct circle.

Recall the equation of a circle from your math course:

Now we substitute the ray equation in this equation.

• a = \text{Direction.x}^2 + \text{Direction.y}^2
• b = 2 \cdot (\text{Origin.x} \cdot \text{Direction.x} + \text{Origin.y} \cdot \text{Direction.y})
• c = \text{Origin.x}^2 + \text{Origin.y}^2 - r^2

Now we need to solve this equation. From your math course you should now how to solve quadratic equations: we first have to calculate the discriminant delta

If delta = 0, there's ONE intersection, that is calculated as follows

t = min(t1, t2);

Now you have your intersection between the ray and the cylinder :-)

we just do:

u = abs(Intersection.z)*0.2; 
v = abs(atan2(Intersection.y, Intersection.x)*256/PI);

that's it :-) you can combine that with depth cue too, i.e. taking the Z into account to get a shade-level, but i leave that to you.

That's already it. If you do that for each pixel, you get a nice tunnel :-)

3.) Moving the camera

You want to move your camera of course :-)

That's easy, change your Origin vector's x,y of you want to move your camera, and if you want to to rotate, just rotate your Direction vector using a matrix or normal 12 mul rotation. I won't go any further into this, as it's really basic stuff, see the source below to check how it works.

4.) Doing it in realtime

I hear you cry, this is IMPOSSIBLE in realtime. Well in fact it is, tracing rays for each pixel :-) But you won't do that, won't you. In fact you just trace rays for some pixel and interpolate between. I take a 40x25 grid (that is 8x8 pixels large) shoot a ray for each grid, i.e. getting (u,v) for each grid position, and interpolate between, that way i get a full 320x200 screen by only calculating 1000 intersections, and it's precise enough. That method can be used for other 2d effects too, kinda great for bitmap distortions.

5.) Some example source for the lazy ones

u,v are an index to a 256x256 texturemap, and as Radius I take 256

virtual void FreeTunnel::GetUV(int x,int y, int &u, int &v) 
{ 
  Vector Direction(x-160, y-100, 256); 
  Direction *= RotationMatrix; 
  Direction.Normalize();		// normalize Direction vector 

  Vector Origin(100, 100, -256); 

 
  // calculate the stuff :-) 
  float a = fsqr(Direction.x) + fsqr(Direction.y); 
  float b = 2*(Origin.x*Direction.x + Origin.y*Direction.y); 
  float c = fsqr(Origin.x) + fsqr(Origin.y) - fsqr(Radius); 

  // calculate discriminent delta 
  float delta = fsqr(b) - 4*a*c; 

  // if there's no real solution 
  if (delta < 0) 
    { 
	  u = 128; 
	  v = 128; 
	  return; 
	} 

  float t,t1,t2; 
  // there are 2 solutions, get the nearest ... this case should never happen 
  t1 = (-b + sqrt(delta))/(2*a); 
  t2 = (-b - sqrt(delta))/(2*a); 
  t = min(t1, t2);                      // min here 

  // finnally the intersection 
  Vector Intersection = Origin + t*Direction; 

  // do the mapping 
  u = (int)(fabs(Intersection.z)*0.2); 
  v = (int)(fabs(atan2(Intersection.y, Intersection.x)*256/PI)); 
}

Again, i call that for 40x25 and interpolate between the (u,v) set. As you can see, i used OOP massively, e.g for Vectors and Matrices. OOP really helps you alot, you should try it.

If you take an 80x50 grid (4x4 interpolation) you might get better results, but this works fine for me.

That's pretty much it, now go ahead and code yourself a killer-tunnel. If you want to see this tunnel in action, get our Evoke97 demo (1st place) the archive is called KWISSEN.ZIP and you should find it on cdrom.com.

6.) Greets

Greets fly to (no order): Tomh, Climax, Shiva, Fontex, Raytrayza, Noize, LordChaos, Red13, kb, DrYes, Siriuz, Crest, Gaffer, Trickster, Houlq, Screamager, LoneWolf, Magic, Unreal, Aap, Cirion, Kyp, Assign, and the rest i have forgotten in some way.

If you feel the need to contact me, do so :-)

In the moment i don't have any e-mail, but i'll get one soon. Try to catch me on iRC (channel #coders and #coders.ger on IRCNET and #luxusbuerg on UnderNet)
Or snail-mail me

Laurent Schmalen
6, rue Tony Schmit
L-9081 Ettelbruck
G.D. Luxembourg

have fun and stay trippy dudes!