TITLE: The Throne of LEGOMAN
NAME: Paul Lewellen
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: OpenGLCoder@hotmail.com
WEBPAGE: (None)
TOPIC: Unnecessarily Complicated Devices
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: legoman.mpg
ZIPFILE: legoman.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray for Windows v3.1

TOOLS USED: 
    MLCAD - for construction of LEGO contraptions
            LeoCad - for construction of the lego figure
            L3P - for conversion of LDRAW files to POV-Ray files
            LGEO - higher-quality, hand-made pieces used by L3P
            Moray for Windows v3.3 - for title text and some textures
            JASC Animation Shop 3 - for fade transitions in animation
            VideoMach 2.3.3 - conversion from .avi to .mpg  
          

CREATION TIME: 
    Approx 20 days from design to completion.

HARDWARE USED: 
    600mhz AMD athlon with 256mb RAM

ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 

  A convoluted method of transferring yourself into a chair, constructed solely
from LEGO-style parts.  


VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 
    Anything that plays MPEG files

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 

        After the animation was planned out, each major piece was constructed
separately in MLCAD.  Then, the major parts were split into the separate moving
pieces, i.e. each axel and its gears were one piece.  The seperate pieces were
then merged in MLCAD, and properly aligned for the animation.  The file created
was then converted into the POV-Ray format using L3P, which utilized pieces in
the LGEO library to improve image quality.  The POV-Ray file was then carefully
hand-edited for the animation.  (Admittedly, some bugs may have slipped
through, but I think almost all of them are no longer extant).  The title image
was created in a two-part process; The LEGO MAN text was modeled in MLCAD, and
the other text was created in Moray.  These files were then merged by hand in
POV-Ray.  After the animation was completely rendered (500 frames), the frames
were combined together in Animation Shop 3.  The only post-processing that
occurred during this procedure was the transition from the title screen and the
fade at the end.  The animation was saved as an avi file, which was then
converted to an MPEG file by VideoMach.