EMAIL: clund@ucsd.edu NAME: Christopher Lund TOPIC: Games COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Mousetrap COUNTRY: USA RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.1 TOOLS USED: Only Moray, and only for the mouse body CREATION TIME: 6-12 hours per CPU HARDWARE USED: 5 different Intel CPU's from a Pentium 200 to a Pentium II-350 ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: For kids who grew up in the 60's and 70's in America (like myself), the Milton Bradley game Mousetrap was culture at it's finest. Moving parts, bright colors, and an amazing Rube-Goldberg device build before your very eyes. Happily, the things about Mousetrap that make it such an appealing game for kids are the same things that make it an appealing subject for animation. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: My biggest tools were a copy of the game Mousetrap, a ruler, and AutoCAD. I have a tendency to over-construct real objects for rendering whenever possible to get absolute realism. In this case, when I started constructing the pieces, I had no idea how the camera would be positioned during the animation. As such, I included details which I didn't know whether or not they would show. At the same time, I also included detail in a few places just out of personal pride. For each piece, the piece was measured with a ruler every which way and two-dimensional drawings were created in AutoCAD. From these drawings, the piece was hand-constructed in POV-Ray (I never have been a fan of modeling programs). The drawings were done partially to make coding easier, and partially for future reference. In doing this, I think I used nearly every primitive POV-Ray offers, including many I had not used before. There are two exceptions to this. First, the body of the mouse was done as a Bezier patch in Moray to get the shape right. Second, the board was scanned and used as an image map. For timing in the animation, the real Mousetrap in action was videotaped and analyzed using the VCR's frame advance button. The .zip file includes the definitions of the pieces and how they are animated. I have not included the spotlighted mouse at the beginning, the scan of the board, or one utility file, although I will be happy to upon request. The only post-processing which was done was to add the title information on the first few frames. Finally, I want to thank Rick Pali for his opinions and a good dozen hours of CPU time.