TITLE: 2999 Gadget Races NAME: Greg M. Johnson COUNTRY: USA EMAIL: gregj56590@aol.com WEBPAGE: http://members.xoom.com/gregjohn (not updated in a while, spending toomuch time on this.) TOPIC: Animations COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. MPGFILE: boid2999.mpg ZIPFILE: boid2999.zip RENDERER USED: Superpatch POV for 3.1a TOOLS USED: sPatch to model ships; John VanSickle's reorient macro; a sky pattern inspired by Ken; algorithms inspired by Craig Reynolds; CorelPhotoPaint7 to make poster. CREATION TIME: About 2 days HARDWARE USED: 450 MHz Pentium II ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: It's a race of flying gadgets where the object is to stay as close as possible to a red ball that moves in a circular path. Winner is based on integrated distance vs. time. Crashing into the spectator tower carries a HEAVY fine. I was inspired by three great moments in computer animation: "Stella & Stanley" and "The Temple" from The Mind's Eye, and the scene from Babylon 5 where Londo Molari looks up and sees a fleet of Shadow ships fly overhead. VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: Have great mercy on any freeze frame of the MPG, as it doesn't look as nice as the moving picture. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: I came up with a new algorithm for flocking which involves true collision avoidance. The actors each have a position, velocity, and acceleration at each frame. The acceleration is towards the red ball, away from each neighbor, and away from the three towers. These three forces have different strengths, and it took weeks of tweaking to come up with a nice-looking flyaround. The sky is just a large scaled sphere where I translate the pigment. The ocean is a heightfield with a Superpatch pattern where I translate the pigment. The text is not added post render put just translated and reoriented appropriately. Also, there's my old blob human figures in the spectator towers. I originally envisioned placing the camera in one of the towers and have the gadgets come fly right at the viewer. I dropped this idea as it was too hard to understand what was going on. If I had another week to play around, I would have tried.