World of Wonders is a Minecraft server that creates themeparks artistically and as realistic as possible. Its a place where friends can hang out, and us, as volunteer creators, can try out things we would like to learn. Real life themeparks use a system that takes action pictures whilst riding a coaster, something that was missing in this project.
I really wanted to take on this project and started prototyping in the game engine Unity. The most important features this project must have are:
- The object/model of the coaster should be visible
- People in the coaster should be visible
- Persons in a seat behind the persons of which a picture has been taken of should also be visible
- The initial image should look as closely as possible to the real-life picture
- 3D rendering happens serverside, not clientside and can be accessed using HTTP requests
Unfortunately, after some trying, Unity didn’t support serverside rendering. Another solution would’ve been using Blender, but because I already had experience with JavaScript, I chose the ThreeJS. This JavaScript library enables 3D rendering inside the HTML canvas using WebGL.
I combined ThreeJS with ExpressJS and Puppeteer. ThreeJS makes the actual 3D scene, ExpressJS enables to make HTTP requests and Puppeteer is used as a ‘headless’ browser on the server.
The different rides also needed different models and covers. The models are made by BOXjordiHEAD, another volunteer for World of Wonders. The covers were made by me, using the pixelart program Aseprite.
