Canadian Experience / Sparty In A Box

This was a multi-part coding project in Michigan State University's class CSE 335 Object Oriented Software Design.

The first part was an individual assignment creating a simple 2D animation software using C++ and wxWidgets, using CLion IDE. The images of the body parts and backgrounds were provided by the professors. Here is a video demonstrating how to animate using the software.

The second part was a group assignment, designing the UML diagram for all of the object classes that would be needed to implement the Sparty-In-A-Box machine, with a crank that turns a shaft that turns gears and a music box. This UML design step was the only part of the project that was collaborative. My teammates on this part of the project were Michael Arciniega, Ziad Bakki, Akram Djomehri, Someshwar Maji, Natali Thiesse, Noah Vermeulen. We were the only team out of 42 teams that successfully got our design approved on the first attempt showing to the professor.

The next part was an individual assignment actually coding the machine to match a reference machine provided (the top machine), and creating a second custom machine of my own design (the bottom one). Each object actually drives the downstream objects in code, it is not simply an animation to appear as if they are all working together. The images of the music box mechanism, key, and lid were provided, the rest of the moving parts are drawn using wxWidgets functions.

For the music, I also recreated the MSU fight song in XML, which drives when the sound effects are triggered and when the little dots on the music box appear.

Finally, tying everything together, I brought the working machines into the 2D animation software that I created at the beginning of the project and animated the characters doing a cheerleading routine synced to the music. (Please don't judge the animation, I only spent a day animating and consider it a first rough blocking draft, the purpose of this project was much more about coding than animating).

Out of 296 students, I was one of only 5 that won the Best Movie award for my final video of the animation and machines working together, and I got an A in the class.

We were asked by the professors not to post our source code online, but I'm attaching the UML design I created in Visual Paradigm.

I'm hoping to created a Mac release build of this and upload it to this page soon for anyone who wants to play around with the animation software.