TITLE: Collisions
NAME: Andrew Wittrock
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: landover@iastate.edu
WEBPAGE: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~landover
TOPIC: Force
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: planet.mpg
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.5 beta 10

TOOLS USED: 
    N-body program of my own, POV-Ray, Premiere, avi2mpg

CREATION TIME: 
    Longer than it should have taken. P

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium III 1.4 Ghz

ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 

Two planets collide and tidal forces slowly tear one of them apart.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 

The simulation was a no-frills n-body simulation, with repulsion and damping
forces when the individual components were in contact.  The program output the
simulation frames to POV-Ray include files as a single blob object.  The
planets are colored with an onion pigment pattern with yellow at the core, red
just below the crust, and planet pigment patterns on the surface.  The hardest
part of the animation was coloring the blob components correctly and
consistently throughout the animation mostly because I wrote the simulation
program in a way that reordered the components for every frame.

And yes, I know it's a simple animation, but I got busy and this was the best I
could throw together before the deadline.  If I'd had more time, it would have
been a simple matter to use more components and find a better coloring scheme.