Rocket Launch Animation

Overview:

In one of my courses at Ecole Polytechnique, I was asked to work on a computer animation for end of the class grading. I chose to work on a simplistic Rocket Launch Animation, and this post intends to show some results, as well as lead you to the project’s source files and code.

Notice before starting:

The project relied heavily on a library called VCL for Visual Component Library, which was crafted by our then professor Dr. Damien ROHMER, and put to use for the sake of the course. The library can be found at: https://github.com/drohmer/inf585_vcl. In order to build and run the project to replicate results, you are going to need to import the library to the project’s root folder. All will be descrived in the README attached to my git repository.

Where to find the project:

The project can be found at: https://github.com/hadi-el-hajj/Rocket-Launch-Simulation. Follow the instructions in the README file.

Results:

Results can be seen in the video Animation.mkv present in the project’s root folder.

Additionally, the following are some pictures to give you an idea of what the end result looks like:

Possible upgrades:

• A more realistic movement of the rocket in the launch phase, following the rocket propulsion equation and a more realistic trajectory
• Subsequently a more realistic separation of the stages and more realistic modeling of their free fall
• Maneuvers on the rocket and boosters and possibility to light one of three engines to control their direction
• Possibility to land boosters on droneships in the sea like SpaceX does (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sJlFzUQVmY)
• Some special effects, like earth vibration, and a better thrust visualization, maybe through a particle system
• Launch of satellite around another planet from earth, for example mars

Some of those ugrades may come in later as I keep working on improving the code from where I left it off.