EMAIL: evilsnack@hotmail.com NAME: John VanSickle TOPIC: Pursuit/Escape COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Escape of the Greb WEBPAGE: http://users4.50megs.com/enphilistor/irtc.htm COUNTRY: US of A RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.1g for Windows. TOOLS USED: Text editor, CMPEG, pencils, paper HARDWARE USED: K6-2 @ 300MHz, 96 Megs of RAM CREATION TIME: I started making notes with pencil and paper for various objects around mid-November, when my PC was packed for shipment. When I got the PC back on 21 December, I started typing up the scene code and doing test renders. Final rendering was complete on 2 January. VIEWING RECOMMENDATION: Full color, 24 frames per second. ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: The Greb seek to retreat and regroup. They don't make it. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: I typed out a bunch of scene code, rendered the frames, and slapped them together with an MPEG compiler, just like I always do. I have two more characters in this entry. One is Kammi, a re-textured Rusty. Adding the low-slung lasers to the Rusty model kept me up until the wee hours of the morning. The colors for Kammi were taken directly from the green, brown, tan, and black of my uniform. The levitating robot is Domo, and is a new model. Using notes I had made over the course of the prior month, I bashed out the scene code in about twelve hours, test renders included. It was a quick design because he floats; legs and wheels are a pain to design. Although I used lots of curves to make this model, it doesn't use blobs. The little jet rings are slightly independent of Domo, so that if he is moving, they will appear to trail behind him a bit. I found a couple bugs in the Greb model (no pun intended), which caused me to spend a couple days re-rendering finished frames. I've been asked about the slow panning and zooming I use in some shots; I do this for long shots of static objects, so that they're less dull. Generally, if nothing is moving in a shot, and the shot is more than three seconds in duration, some sort of camera movement should be in use. If you have any other questions about things, e-mail me directly, or leave comments on the comments page (and be sure to put your e-mail address in the comments; sometimes the bot records the wrong address).