TITLE: Desktop Relaxation

NAME: Ian Shumsky
COUNTRY: United Kingdom

EMAIL: ianshumsky@hotmail.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.outerarm.freeserve.co.uk

TOPIC: Gadgets and Odd Devices
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: isgadget.mpg
ZIPFILE: isgadget.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.1 for Windows


TOOLS USED: 


Paint Shop Pro 5 to convert images to .tga from .bmp (forgot the
switch - Doh!) and to add text to poster
cmpeg to create the .mpg file
Photoshop 4 to create .jpg poster


CREATION TIME: 


Forgot to keep a record as I used six different machines to produce
the images. However, as a guide, on my PII, 300MHz box, each image was
taking an average of 3h 15m to render. Over the 250 frame sequence,
that equates to about 812h 30m, or almost 34 days... After this,
conversion time and mpeg creation don't count for much.


HARDWARE USED: 


Pentium, 133MHz, 64M mem, running NT4        (Aprox 9.50h / frame - 19 frames)
Pentium, 233MHz, 96M mem, running NT4        (Aprox 5.00h / frame - 10 frames)
Pentium II, 300MHz, 64M mem, running W95     (Aprox 3.25h / frame - 82 frames)
Pentium II, 400MHz, 384M mem, running NT4    (Aprox 2.25h / frame - 49 frames)
Pentium II, 450MHz, 128M mem, running NT4    (Aprox 2.25h / frame - 20 frames)
Dual Pentium II, 400MHz, 1G mem, running NT4 (Aprox 2.00h / frame - 70 frames)


ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 


A Newton's Cradle.

Unfortunately, I didn't start on this round until the beginning of
March, so I was a little constrained in what I could submit.

I decided to do a simple looping animation and concentrate on image
quality rather than frame quantity. Each image is rendered with area
lights, focal blur and radiosity.

If I had more time... Well, I would try and make the disk a little
more cluttered, I would produce a more accurate motion for the cradle
and add an extra 120 or so frames to push the aminamtion up to the 5M
mark.


VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 


This is intended to be a cyclic animation, so its best to set your
player to loop the file. I found that Microsoft's Active Movie viewer
gave the best results on W95 and NT platforms.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 


All the basic shapes were created for the 'First Encounter' Stills
round. Needed to reposition all objects and create movement routines
for the Newton_s cradle and camera. The text file supplied with that
entry (http://www.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/1998-12-31/isfirste.txt)
provides more info about the objects. I had to rebuild the cradle to
add movement to it.

All movement is based on sin curves. This gives a nice smooth camera
movement, but I think it causes the cradle movements to be a bit too
uniformed. As usual, I didn't have the time to implement proper
physical pendulum movement to the balls. The movement sequences on the
camera and cradle are based on 1 clock unit. I left this alone for the
camera, but multiplied the clock by 14 and then lowered it so it was
<= 1 for the cradle. For each clock unit, this gave one sweep of the
camera to 14 sweeps of the cradle.