TITLE: "Air Freight"
NAME: Glenn McCarter
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: gmccarter@hotmail.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Gallery/2006/
TOPIC: Transportation
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: afreight.mpg
ZIPFILE: afreight.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.0

TOOLS USED: 

   POV-Ray - modelling and rendering
   Moray - engine models
   Cmpeg - convert TGA to MPG
   Paint Shop Pro - heightfield creation;
                    convert poster image to JPEG

RENDER MUSIC: The Propellerheads, "History Repeating"

CREATION TIME: 
    89h 40m to render

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium II - 266 mhz



ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 


After the early '20s, when subOrbital developed the first commercially
successful graviton reflector, transportation was revolutionized.  Today,
although agrav devices are not yet cheap enough for most fixed objects,
nor strong enough to support large structures, these powerplants have become
commonplace in vehicles.

In this film, we watch an historic moment: a very special cargo is
transported on a journey from the old museum, through Red Sands spaceport,
to its new home LEO-P1 (Low Earth Orbit Platform One).

LEO is, of course, the premiere transorbital station in our skies. Run by
Dunlap Inns, LEO is a favorite vacation destination for tens of thousands of
travellers annually.  Visible worldwide nearly every night, the "square
star" inspires many to consider the wonders of off-world experience.

Featured vehicles here include a modified ArcLiner "LoadStar" 2N, an
earlier LoadStar 2J, and an Hanata Industries SN-202 "Heavy Lifter"
orbital transfer train.

Gravity Dynamics Corporation manufactures the standard support/propulsion
units for most medium-to-heavy transports. The trucks use the GraDyn
"GravJet"(tm) active repulsion units on the trailer, and the newer
"FluxDrive"(tm) system on the cab.  The twin GravJets on the SN-202
locomotive are the largest vehicle-based repulsors in general use today,
capable of generating over 3,200mqg vertical thrust each.



VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 


This animation is 320 x 240 x 1860 frames.  It is designed to play for about
1 minute, 17 seconds at 24fps.  If your viewing software has the ability to
rescale the window, make it about 30 percent wider than usual to give it a
"widescreen" cinematic look.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 


The film consists of 18 "scenes" -- short segments which are individually
animated.  Some of these are combined to form seamless longer scenes, such as
the "chase" scene leading to the city.

I created everything in the film specifically for this IRTC competition,
except for a couple of buildings in the background, which are from an
earlier POV-Ray image of mine.  Everything was created in the POV-Ray text
editor, except the engines, which were made with the Moray modeller.

Key challenges included the "bounce" of the transport as it is being loaded,
and the blinking runway lights of the docking port.  Both of these effects
required a fair amount of math to set up properly in POV-Ray.  Look in the
zipfile if you want to see how these (or anything else) were done.

I used DTA or Cmpeg to create quick test animations during development.  For
the final animation, I edited out a number of frames and used Cmpeg with a
special quantization (compression) to tailor the output to meet the 3mb limit.

The poster is a moment from the film, but taken with a special camera
angle.  This was rendered at antialiased 640x480 in POV-Ray. I then used
Paint Shop Pro to add the text, resample to 320x240, sharpen, add motion
blur, and convert to jpg.