NAME:  Nick Santos 
EMAIL:  BoomerKuwanger@aol.com

TITLE:  Agent X
TOPIC:  Alien Invasion
COPYRIGHT:  I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.

COUNTRY:  New Hampshire, USA
WEBPAGE:  http://NickSantos.virtualave.net

RENDERER USED:
	POV-Ray for Windows 3.1

TOOLS USED:
	pjBMP2AVI
	avi2mpg1
	Paint (for jpeg conversion) 
	Notepad (to write this)
	My calculator, pencil, and paper (The law of cosines -- ARGGGHHHH!!!)

CREATION TIME:  
	Errrr...probably longer than I can count.
	On average frames took about an hour a piece to render, although 
they ranged from 10 min. to 3 hrs per frame.

HARDWARE USED:
        2 Pentium 133 MHz with 32 megs of ram each (...I think)
	1 AMD-K6 266 MHz with 48 megs of ram (when I was close to deadline)

VIEWING RECOMENDATIONS:
        Viewing Recommendations? What's that supposed to mean?  
Any mpeg-player should work.  The video resolution is 320 X 240 at
25 fps.

ANIMATION DESCRIPTION:
	A robotic secret agent (Agent X) infiltrates CIA 
headquarters through a vent.  It lowers itself into a top secret 
computer room and downloads some data onto a disk.  However, it finds 
that it will not get away as easily as it wishes...

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED:
	I discovered the world of ray-tracing while taking a video course,
so I was inclined to incorporate a lot of video techniques in this animation.  
I probably should discuss this aspect as well.

	FROM A DIRECTOR'S POINT OF VIEW:
 	One of the nice features of animation is that you have complete 
control over everything.  I tried to create a very structured, organized setting
by using colors (besides blacks, whites, and grays) sparsely.  Each color is 
used for a specific reason.  In addition, all motion was restricted to Agent X 
and the computer to give the building an empty feeling.  In regards to motion, 
Agent X moves linearly to make it look awkward (this was especially interesting 
to watch this effect because spontaneous acceleration is virtually non-existant 
in the real world), while the camera always moves on quadratic curves for 
smoothness.  It was also useful to be able to control reflections so easily.
	It was a little weird creating such a short piece (I'm used to creating
3-5 minute pieces).  I'm also still working on the timing in animations,
so I apologize if the rhythm is a bit disproportioned. 

	FROM A TECHNICAL POINT OF WIEW:
	All of the code was written completely by hand.  This is the first 
real animation that I have done, and I did a lot of experimentation.  
First I modelled each object, and then cut and pasted them 
into each shot.  Rather than making it one huge animation, I compiled it
shot by shot and then connected all of the shots in the avi and mpeg encoders.  
This made the code easier to work with, debug, and optimize.  Not every object was 
in every shot, and it cut the render time significantly to remove objects not
in the frame.   
	I included all of the POV-Ray files, if anyone is interested in 
looking at them.  All of the shots are labeled "00sXX.pov" where XX is the shot number.
In case anyone was wondering, shot11 and shot10 were switched by accident, and 
were simply rearranged at the end.  Shot7B was a slightly different style 
of shot07.  Shot07 was scrapped for some reason that I can't remember (I think 
there may have been some error in the math that I didn't notice until
after I rendered it). 

OTHER NOTES:
This is my first major ray-tracing project, so there's 
just a few things that I'd like to say:
	-- Superellipsoids are extremely useful once you learn how to use them
		efficiently.
	-- You can never appreciate the value of trigonometry when trying to figure out
		how to place objects.
	-- Keep things simple
	-- Write notes in the text (//like this) as reminders
	-- Do not procrastinate!!!  I needed more time than I thought in the end 
		and almost didn't make it.
	-- I pity the fool!  (I must pay my respects to Mr. T!)
	-- Until I found POV-Ray, I assumed that computer generated 3D graphics were
		only available to the elite.  A million thanks to the creators of POV-Ray
		for making such a powerful tool available to the public.
	-- Thanks to my Video, Trig, and Physics teachers; their lessons made 
		this possible.
	-- If you have read all the way down to here -- you have way too much free
		time on your hands.