TITLE: Microcosms NAME: Neil Alexander COUNTRY: Canada EMAIL: stoker@echo-on.net WEBPAGE: none TOPIC: Microcosms COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. MPGFILE: cosmsna.mpg ZIPFILE: cosmsna.zip RENDERER USED: POV-Ray 3.1 for Windows TOOLS USED: Paintshop Pro for movie poster and processing of some image maps, AutoCAD for an image map CMPEG to compile the animation. CREATION TIME: 3 months - I didn't track the render time HARDWARE USED: Pentium II 233MHz 64Mb ram ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: This animation takes the viewer through several progressively smaller worlds from the everyday "macrocosm" down to the nuclues of an atom. We start looking at the outside of a house (my house, actually), and see a cat (my cat Cassidy) in the window watching the birds. We then move inside, and see a flea jump from the cat's back. The flea leads us to a dust mite on a nearby chair. We enter the dust mite's mouth to find microbes digesting cells. Inside such a cell, we see protein molecules being extracted from the cell's nucleus. We enter an atom on a protein chain, and zoom in to the nucleus. VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: Activemovie DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: My original intention with this animation was to do the whole thing with a single camera; ie with no obvious scene cuts. I found, however, that a constantly moving camera led to very poor Mpeg compression - my first 6 seconds used up over 2 Mb - and I decided that I would have to have cuts to different camera views. In my last animation, I tried to keep the modelling relatively simple to allow fast rendering. This time, I wanted to focus on more detailed modelling, putting in as much detail as I would for a still image. Most of the modelling is straightforward CSG. The organic shapes, such as the birds, cat, flea, mite, etc. are blob models. I found the new macro feature very useful for animated objects, allowing me to use "pose" variables when placing the objects. Some of the objects, particularly items in the livingroom, were modelled with POV 3.0. The new features in 3.1 would have simplified the code for these objects, but I didn't have the time or inclination to rewrite them. I found that POV-Ray acts differently at different scales. Several times I would get strange effects, such as small-scaled objects not casting shadows, which would not occur if I rescaled my scene so that the offending object was closer to a unit-length size. I also found media objects to be particularly vulnerable to scale effects. When I tried to scale my cyan-colored atom a few orders of magnitude larger, it turned red. If my atoms were scaled too small, they would not appear at all. As you can imagine, this led to a great deal of frustration before I figured out the cause. I have included all files required to render this animation in the zip file except for the image maps (rug and gable). Also, the credits require the true type font HandelGothicBT to my moved into the Include folder. One note about the cat; Cassidy does really have a stubby tail. This was not a short-cut (no pun intended) to avoid modelling the tail.