TITLE: Counterforce
NAME: Thomas Bates
COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: thomas.bates@shaw.ca
WEBPAGE: http://members.home.net/ejdeha/

TOPIC: Force
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: tbcforce.mpg
RENDERER USED: 

    POV-Ray 3.5 beta 9


TOOLS USED: 

    Microsoft Photo Editor 3.01 - for viewing frames
    IrfanView 3.61 - for viewing frames and batch-converting BMP to TGA
    CMPEG.EXE - for MPEG encoding


CREATION TIME: 

    Three months -- includes about an hour or two per day designing,
    and countless overnight renders.


HARDWARE USED: 

    Celeron, 400 MHz, 320 MB


ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 

    The concept was inspired by the family at alt.fan.dragons
    It's your basic story of a Knight-In-Shining-Armour rescuing a
    Fair Maiden from ... no, wait ...
    I tried to make the story tell itself. (YOU tell ME the story.)
     CAST:  Ejdeha-ma Sefeed-eh - the white leader
            Gelgisith - the small golden wyvern
            Pyros Rutilicus - the large red dragon.
            Deranged Dragon - the larger green dragon.
            Parvaneh - the object of our mission.
            Nameless extras as guards.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 

    I have been working on the character models for months and they
    continue to be a Work-In-Progress.  I have not used any modelling
    or posing tools--these are done strictly in text.

    I abandoned AA during the last several seconds of the piece
    because I was running out of time (20 hours left, 200 images
    to go, 30 min/image -- something's gotta go).

    When I started this project, I looked at what others had done
    and found some entries that were over 60 seconds long.  Using 
    this, I wrote a 60-second script.  About half-way through, I
    found that the MPEG encoder that I was using would only allow 
    me about 30-seconds, so I modified my script accordingly.
    When I was close to the end, I found a better MPEG encoder
    that had better picture quality as well as better compression
    allowing for up to about 50 seconds.  This let me breathe a 
    little easier, but at this point it was too late to change the
    script to fill up the time available.  That's ok, though, I
    think it's quite nice as it is. }:8}

    On the other hand ...
    There were SO many things I wanted to do with this if I had 
    more time.  Maybe next time.  (I wanted to fade from one scene
    to the next ... I wanted the dragons to shoot "Force" bolts at
    the tower guards and have them tumbling off the tower ... I 
    wanted the tower guards to be shooting arrows ... I wanted to
    have some "coincident object" detection so the dragon's various
    limbs didn't pass through the stone floor, walls and ceiling 
    (and each other) ... I wanted to have the fetters turn red hot
    and fall clanging to the floor ... I wanted Parvaneh (the
    captive) to stay pinned to the wall just one more second until
    she was actually released from the fetters ,,, )

    I certainly learned a lot from this, my first "feature-length"
    animation--things that will allow me to have more time, next time.