EMAIL: mattir@dlc.fi, fjansson@abo.fi
NAME: Matti Raitoharju, Fredrik Jansson, Jenni Pulkkinen
TOPIC: Evolution
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Butterfly 
COUNTRY: Finland
WEBPAGE: http://www.abo.fi/~fjansson/ (in swedish, and in quite a bad shape)
RENDERER USED: Povray 3.5
TOOLS USED: mpeg2encode, mpgtx, Qbasic, GCC, homemade C & Basic programs
CREATION TIME: 3 months
HARDWARE USED: misc. PC's (Linux & Windows)


ANIMATION DESCRIPTION:

This animation shows how a small breeze caused by a butterfly evolves 
into a wind and then into a hurricane. The "butterfly effect", 
that a small change in the initial conditions of a system can
change the result drastically, appears also in biological evolution.
We admit that the plot is a bit unevolved, and the theme might
miss the point a bit. Towards the end we had little time for the animation,
because of military service.
At least we had fun doing the animation, and developing the simulations
needed for the tablecloth, flag and bridge. 


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED:

Matti did almost all of the modelling (in povray) and made the qbasic bridge 
simulation.    

Fredrik wrote a c program that simulates cloths, much according to the
ideas from rune|vision (www.runevision.com) and Hugo Elias' page about 
particle systems (www.freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/models/m_main.htm).
The code is quite a mess at this time but he hope to release it at some time.

Jenni gave artistic advice, modeled a flower, and 
removed some ugly details added for the sake of Pure Hack Value like a 
checkered sphere on a reflective table cloth...
 
1 Scene, Butterfly 
        The grass is made of a few thousand triangles, four in each blade.
        Flowers are made by a small recursive flower macro, originally 
	made for another scene. The stones are isosurfaces.
        The butterfly is also an old model animated and textured for 
	this scene.

2 Scene, Cafe
        The fountain and candle are made in povray, the tablecloths are 
	simulated with the program.

3 Scene, Wheat field
        The field is made in povray, a lot of cylinders. 
	The flag is simulated.         

4 Scene, Seagull
        Povray.

5 Scene, Bridge
        The ground and canyon is a height field, the bridge is calculated 
	with a QBASIC program by Matti. This scene was a nightmare to
	encode with mpeg2encode, it looked terribly smeared for some reason.  

6 Scene, Earth
        Povray, satellite image.

The animation was packed with mpeg2encode. When the whole animation was 
packed as a single piece the bridge scene showed terrible artefacts.
We solved this by packing the animations in three parts and then joining these
with mpgtx. This gave a better result, with much less artefacts.
We also tried the sampeg encoder, but it seemed to give a lower image 
quality at the same bitrate.