TITLE: Doctrine Manoeuverability
NAME: Daniel Dresser
COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: dresserd@techie.com
TOPIC: Adventure
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: dddocman.mpg
ZIPFILE: dddocman.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.1

TOOLS USED: 

   Moray for one bicubic patch 
   Bumper for viewing test renders
   IrfanView for image conversion
   cmpeg for mpeg encoding


CREATION TIME: 

     Design: two weeks
     Render: estimated 16 hr


HARDWARE USED: 
    Athlon 1200


ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 


Stereotypical Stars-Wars-esque aerial battle.  Lone pilot toasts six baddies.
     

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 


Sloppily.  Very, very sloppily.  I was in a hurry.

The code is probably the worst I've ever written in terms of organization, even
worse than my last video, with a few sporadic comments that probably don't even
apply to the final product.  I included the source just in case you have a
burning desire to see how something works, but I can only wish you luck in
understanding my twisted organization.

I would tidy it up, but I have exams and then leave for camp for a month, so I
don't have the time.

This was an idea I had for a while, but I wasn't going to do it because I knew I
couldn't do it very professionally.  Then my Communications Technology teacher
gives me a final project where I can use two weeks of class time to produce a
random advertisement, and I figured I might as well throw it together and call
it a commercial.  The ship models were already done, more or less, so I just
had to create some background and animate it.

The ships are mainly straightforward CSG, with some media for drive flares.  The
main component of the six baddies is a banana shape made with a cylindrical
bicubic patch (strictly speaking, two bicubic patches),  I generated some
really sweet fractal mountain heightfields to use as background, but with very
limited time, I ended up going with a normal mapped plain instead, although it
is kind of pathetic.

The ship movement is all manually coded, one of the reasons it lacks any
subtleness.  I probably would have been better off using a spline macro on an
array of positions, but I was in a hurry.

The end result lacks professionalism, but it was fun to make, and hopefully is
fun to watch.  My friend tells me I'm overly enamoured with freeze and rotate,
but since it's a bit of a goofy rendering anyway, I figured I wouldn't restrain
myself.