TITLE: The Raytrix
NAME: Brendan Lemke
COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: brendanlemke@canada.com
TOPIC: Slow Motion
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: raytrix.mpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-RAY 3.1g

TOOLS USED: 
    SPatch, Fast Movie Processor for previews, Cmpeg, Explode.inc,
Spray.inc, and Bend.inc

CREATION TIME: 
    Spent about 12 hrs/wk since mid-February

HARDWARE USED: 
    A small render farm of slow little pentiums.

ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 


The animation begins with a dial-up connection to the Raytrix, a ray traced 3D
world existing only in the computer.  The main character, our hero, is a simple
countertop mirror.  He begins by making an impossible leap from one skyscraper
to another by freeing his mind.  Upon landing he faces his nemesis, the spray
bottle, and the showdown begins.  After dodging the first lethal shot from the
bottle the mirror begins to believe.  The next lethal shot is stopped in
mid-air, proving he is the One.  The mirror is now able to view the Raytrix in
it's native green code.  The mirror then invades the body of the bottle,
destroying it from the inside.  In triumph, he demonstrates his new-found power
and flies up into the sky.


VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 
    Seemed to run just fine with Windows Media Player

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 


Slow Motion... What better example could there be than the invention of the
Wachowski brothers!!  If you don't know where the inspiration for this entry
came from then it sounds like you need to unplug and follow a white rabbit once
in a while.

Everything was done using free stuff.  The goal for me on this entry was to try
to keep things as simple as possible, without sacrifice in the final product. 
My personal nemesis was all of the media statements and the geometric increase
in rendering time that they caused.  It would have been far simpler (more
tedious, though) to have done graphic frame by frame edits to put in the
'effects'.  Aside from motion blur, I decided instead to eliminate post-process
editing altogether.

The mirror is simple CSG.  The spray bottle is a mesh created with SPatch. 
Explosions, the sprays, and bends of the bottle were done using Chris Colefax's
include files.  The more detailed buildings are all CSG or simple geometric
shapes with heavy use of the brick texture.  The other buildings are a height
field.  The street texture is a photo projected on a plane.  A ground fog was
used to give the impression of height and distant horizon.  The 'bubbles' seen
on the surface of the bottle when the mirror is inside it are actually just
clear refracting spheres near the bottle -- much easier than distorting the
actual triangle mesh.  All the animation is controlled through the POV-Ray
internal animation clock and some fairly simple math.  

There were numerous other scenes that I had in mind to do but left out because
of size constraints and the hope for a somewhat cohesive plot.  If I were to do
it again, I'd do something different with the spray bottle texture. (not sure
what)  A sound track was created, but not sure yet if I have the space to
include it...

Thanks to Kev for the seed that sprouted this idea.  Thanks (again) to my family
for their patience.