Ghost Bunny Photobooth

Ghost Bunny Photobooth is a stylistic, physically simulated animation featuring a textured soft-body rabbit inspired by the iconic “York ghosts” from York, England. The rabbit character is animated to repeatedly hop in the scene using the mass-spring system while maintaining physically realistic and deformation.

The project extends the CSC317 A8 Mass-Spring Systems assignment by integrating:

The Mesh / Shader Pipeline lab’s texture loading system
A character-like breathing animation
A cinematic photobooth-style flash effect, triggered interactively using Key “D”

The final rendered “Piece” is an animation showing the ghost bunny breathing while occasional bright flashes illuminate the scene like a camera photobooth capturing snapshots.

Features Added

1. Textured Ghost Bunny Mesh

Loaded bunny model from translated bunny.stl file in ray-tracing assignment [1], and applied a ghost-like texture [2] inspired by York ghost figures.
Integrated the UV + texture loading logic from the Meshes/Shader pipeline labs.

Implemented in main.cpp via:

if (VT.rows() == 0 || FT.rows() == 0) {
  VT.resize(V.rows(), 2);
  ...
  }

Produces a stylized “ghost bunny” visual appearance.

2. breathing Animation for the Rabbit

Added periodic upward impulses or sinusoidal modifications to fext to make the rabbit hop without excess deformation utilizing a mass-spring architecture, animating the real breathing effect on read bunny bones & muscle.
Implemented inside the fast_mass_springs_step_dense function, and in main.cpp, alongside gravity and wind.
Creates a rhythmic hopping motion while still obeying spring physics, making the rabbit’s body movement naturally as it breaths.

3. Photobooth Flash Effect (`D` / `d`)

Created a camera flash effect: a rapid brightening followed by a quick decay.

Implemented in viewer.callback_key_pressed in main.cpp:

case 'D':
case 'd':
    // Increase lighting_factor intensely for a brief flash
    break;

Uses viewer.core().lighting_factor to control brightness
Mimics real photobooth flash timing — perfect for the ghost bunny aesthetic.

Efforts

The project combines:

The texture design borrowed the inspiration from York Ghost [3]
Character animation using mass-spring physics
Interactive cinematic effects (photobooth flash)

The aesthetic goal is a ghostly rabbit being “photographed” mid-breath.

Acknowledgements