EMAIL: jull43@tampabay.rr.com NAME: Matt Giwer TOPIC: Dance COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Droiderdance COUNTRY: USA WEBPAGE: http://www.giwersworld.org/artiv/ & artii/ & artiii/ RENDERER USED: povray 3.5 and 3.6 TOOLS USED: gimp, mpeg_encode, ImageMagick RENDER TIME: Celeron 400, 64M, linux 2.4.18-3 kernel PII 333, 128M, linux 2.4.18-3 kernel 5627 frames @ 374x220 VIEWING: the usual highly recommended computer GENERAL INFO: http://www.giwersworld.org/artv/mpeg.phtml has generic comments on size limited animations. THANKS FOLKS: For your kind comments on my last entry at http://www.irtc.org/anims/2004-04-15/ Most improved? It is also the one with almost all of the techniques in previous animations included. Watch for a high resolution version of this, 25Meg, at http://www.giwersworld.org/artv/ See Comment: below. IMAGE DESCRIPTION: It is a dance performance which in a no sound competition is a bit of a challenge. So a style of dance which does not actually require music only rhythm. This Russian, I believe Cossack, dance is one of the few. So it starts with establishing shots which are clearly that dance hopefully getting the rhythm in the head of the viewer. After the rhythm is established it is time to make the animation more interesting. But always the question. Would you, as a Grey or a Bush or a Hussein, pay good Quatloos to see this dance? By definition dance is repetitive but with variations to keep it interesting. It needs a kicker beyond control of the animated objects to win the Palme de Or`pressed Latinum award. Yes, it does feel a bit obscene. 8Ball reprises his Jetball role in 8 Ball Conquers Mars playing the Tin Man. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Reminds me of my first entry in an animation competition. I could barely spell Povray in those days. Buzby Berkley never told much of a story in his movies. The basic rhythm is 24 frames per cycle overlaid on 30 frames per second. There are four segments per 24 frames. This is eyeball aesthetics and includes results with a GOP of 16 so scene lengths are multiples of 16 and 24 but where it gets hairy, move the camera. I now understand why I got such a low score of the Famous Choreographers' School test. The unreality of these creations fascinates me. The emphasis on realism makes additional unreality less expected rather than more. So an establishing shot has the Land of Oz as stage scenery and the dancers enter the scenery. The Emerald City of Oz is from 8 Ball's Journey. When Oz is the reality the audience is an image mapped to a rectangular mesh. One of the tricks I have learned from watching the pros on TV and the movies is scening. Splicing scenes is arbitrary. It is possible to add scenes in the middle of perfect sequences and the "test audience" never notices what you think are fatal errors. Everything dances towards the end. Even Captain "Tinman" 8Ball and his clones appear for the grand finale. Why were the zooming around scenes used? I wanted to do it. When you fail the Famous Choreographer's School test you have to make up with style what you can't deliver with art. Memo to file: Come up with a rainbow that is not the povray effect. It doesn't work as a lens effect. ======== The Zip file is complete and permits one scene to be recreated. Of course it is absent meaningful comments so take it for what it is worth. Comments are for QA/QC weenies not me. How long did it take? So long that 10 days before the deadline you realize you have made an error in the style of animation and don't have the time to redo it. Comment: The less pixelation and the more complex the scene the shorter time of the animation for this maximum file size competition. If you take points off for pixelation you should put them back if you like the extra scenes it permits. Similarly if you think the modeling is too simple but like the scenes it permits, put the points back. There is no way around this trade-off. You can't have it both ways. But if you don't like either the pixelation of the scenes I guess I'm screwed. ;) EXAMPLE: The scene approaching the theater -- all else being equal -- without stars mpeg encodes to 221K and with stars to 580K. If you like complex rather than simple scenes the same rule applies. The more complex the scene the larger the mpeg file all else being equal. If I am in error in this, someone tell me how to get around the size problem. Look for a hires version of this on http://www.giwersworld.org/artv/