TITLE: Oh the Things we can Learn! NAME: Marlo Steed COUNTRY: Canada EMAIL: marlo.steed@uleth.ca WEBPAGE: http://www.edu.uleth.ca/faculty/members/steed/ TOPIC: Journey COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. MPGFILE: learn.mpg RENDERER USED: Lightwave TOOLS USED: Lighwave, Knot Plot, Final Cut and Cleaner 6 for CREATION TIME: I have lost track, I have no idea but plent of time. HARDWARE USED: Powerbook G4 ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: I created this visual and auditory Ode to the journey of becoming a good teacher. It was inspired by Dr. Seuss and his book, "Oh the Places You'll Go!_ - a story of a journey into our imaginations. I work in a Faculty of Education. Our mandate is to educate future teachers. Part of our students' experience is going out into the classrooms and actually teaching as part of their learning experience. We call it a practicum experience but in many ways, it is a journey. It is journey in the sense that students often have to travel to new places of thinking and doing to be successful. Change, creativity, and adapting to change are all necessary. I have worked closely with our students in the schools and have seen a variety of experiences - some flounder with classroom discipline, while others see the vision of inspired teaching. This animation is a journey into learning to be a better teacher. This is a universal experience. The success of our society is dependent on how well we teach and inspire students, our children, employees, and our colleagues. This animation started out as a rather ambitious storyboard. Originally I thought I would have the students be actual modeled characters but then that became too much, so instead I used balls to represent the characters. I think that worked out. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: Everything you see in this animation was created and rendered in Lightwave, except for two mathematical knots. The knots were created in a free program called Knot Plot (developed at the University of British Columbia). This is a spectacular little program for creating 3D portrayals of mathematical knots. I imported those models into Lightwave and incorporated those into the animation. The rest was all done in Lightwave. I used tools in Lightwave to achieve collision detection, path animation, and flocking.