TITLE: Molecular forest fire
NAME: Maarten Hofman
COUNTRY: USA (Originally Netherlands)
EMAIL: maarten_hofman@hotmail.com
TOPIC: Force of Nature
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: mhforest.mpg
ZIPFILE: mhforest.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.1

TOOLS USED: 
    Cmpeg, Photoshop 6.0

CREATION TIME: 
    4 hours

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium IV, 1.8 MHz, 256 MB Memory

ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 

The animation is a forest fire at the molecular level. (I first wanted to do a 
flood, with a heightfield with water that slowly rises, but decided not to).
It starts with a
cellulose molecule (a small one: consisting of only three glucose molecules)
which is one of the molecules that appears often in trees and plants. Then it
switches to an approaching cload of (14) oxygen molecules. They react, and the
result is that the cellulose is completely burned up, resulting in water and
carbonoxide (both mono and di). For those interested, the reaction is:
1 C18H32O16 + 14 O2 -> 10 CO2 + 8 CO + 16 H2O
Of course, the chemical reaction would normally not take place with all oxygen
molecules together, but one by one. To make the animation slightly more
powerful, this fact was ignored. 


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 

Everything was hand coded (the complete source file is included with the 
submission). First I investigated the chemical formulae needed and ray traced
the cellulose. Then I did the other molecules. I used random numbers to place
the various molecules in space, and added two other parts to create the 
setting (a plane with wood texture, to indicate a forest, and a sky that slowly
turns orange, to indicate the burning). I then let the oxygen molecules
converge on the cellulose. After the reaction, I let the other molecules spread
in random directions again. Once I had all the frames, I used CMPEG to combine
them, and I used Adobe Photoshop to create the title page.