TITLE: Juggling Machine
NAME: Reuven Weiser
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: reuven53@aol.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.yucs.org/~rweiser/ray/

TOPIC: Gadgets & Odd Devices
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: juggle.mpg
ZIPFILE: juggle.zip
RENDERER USED: 

        POV-Ray 3.02 (though it would have been much easier with
        3.1 had I known about macros)


TOOLS USED: 

        CMPEG - for MPEG conversion


CREATION TIME: 

        A few weeks of work and about 30 hours of rendering


HARDWARE USED: 

        Pentium MMX 166, 24 MB RAM 


ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 

        This amazing Juggling Machine breaks the record for most
        objects juggled at once (formerly 11, if I'm not mistaken) by
        juggling 13 balls. No, it's not a perpetual motion machine; 
        the paddles are moving very quickly (as they'd have to in order
        to accomplish this feat) and you need a sharp eye (or a pause 
        button) to spot them.

        As the animation progresses, the camera's location and angle 
        shift from tracing the path of a single ball to a stabilized, 
        centered perspective.

        This is my first entry to the IRTC. I'm somewhat new to 
        animation, so I'm looking forward to any constructive criticism
        you can give me. Also, the code is a bit messy. I hope that any
        of you who are interested don't have too much trouble 
        deciphering it. 


VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 

        You may need to adjust the brightness setting on your monitor
        to ensure that the colors are neither too bright nor too dark.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 

        First, I set up the motion of the balls (which I was actually 
        working on already for a Juggling Man, who can now be seen on 
        my web site). They do obey the laws of physics 
        (y = y0 + v0*t + .5*a*t^2). I then set up the paddles "around" 
        them. (I had to vary the motion of the paddles in order to 
        make sure that they didn't pass through the balls.) I then 
        built the machine, which was designed to "shadow" the pattern 
        traced by the balls. I then arranged the background setting. 

        No modeling tools were used in the creation of this animation. 
        All parts are pretty simple. Obviously, the balls are spheres. 
        The paddles are a union of cylinders. The tubes are differenced
        tori. The machine is a combination of meshes (for the sides 
        and front) and cylinders and sphere (for the edges). The logo 
        in the middle, my initials, is a union of simple text objects. 
        The curtain is just a box with a ripples normal, and the stone 
        platform and wooden floor are also just boxes. The spotlight 
        was a nice way of making any further background settings 
        irrelevant, besides the fact that one would expect no less for 
        such a momentous performance.
        
        I wrote every bit of code myself, except for the textures of 
        the gold, silver, stone table and wooden floor. I got those from 
        the standard POV-Ray library. No post-processing tools were used.