TITLE: Oops
NAME: Matthias M. Giwer
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: jull43@ij.net
WEBPAGE: www.giwersworld.org
TOPIC: Pursuit and Escape
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: oops.mpg
ZIPFILE: oops.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    povray 3.1g for linux

TOOLS USED: 
    gimp, Berkeley mpeg_encode

CREATION TIME: 
    about 85 hours

        Praise Torvalds. Windows would have crashed in the middle of many
scenes.

        The following times are not necessary the final times included in
the animation as speed enhancements were made in the process of revising
some scenes in addition to quality changes. Q is Quality. Note overlaps in
frames. 

Q9
        scene 0, 000-099,  4h 13m,  intro

Q7
        100-399, 47h 18m, pex
        300-399, 1h 35m , pex 

Q9
        scene 1, 100-199, 30h, target into gate
        scene 2, 200-299, 30h, ship into gate
        scene 3, 300-399,  8h, through wormhole

Q7
        scene 4, 400-499,  4h 18m, approaching earth
        scene 5, 500-599,  3h, around and away from earth
        scene 6a 600-685,  4h 21m, firing and coming around to moon 
        scene 6b 686-724,  2h 10m, slice the moon


HARDWARE USED: 
    PII/333, Redhat 7.0


ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 


        Just your basic chase scene through a wormhole via my kind of
jumpgate and a flyby of earth and moon. Then some Startrekkian visible laser
shoot 'em up ending with an OOPS! of destroying the moon. Some of the stills
going into this were presented and discussed in povray.binaries.stills
during the contest period. Descriptions of their creation may be found
there. Some scenes were posted to povray.binaries.animation during the
contest period.


VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 


        Videoblaster Super 3000 Duper Stereovisor with Quad sound and Gordie
Mk 4 Mod 2 drivers but an ordinary monitor is reported to work. (What in the
heck is this paragraph supposed to include?)


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 


        In a very ad hoc manner. The zip file contains more or less the
complete things that went into the code but they were hand changed between
scenes and within scenes so do not expect it to duplicate the MPEG. Thus the
included mpeg_encode script is misleading to that extent. It means you can
not render from 000-724 and expect the same results.

        Full duplication would require the use of compressed image maps
running to 10 Megs in size and therefore are not included.

        The Gimp was used to create the starfield in the scenes including
the earth as well as the parts of the composite image which goes into the
earth. It was also used to create the texture for the spreading destruction
of the moon.

        The wormhole is the torus with the lightening texture in the source
file. Refer to the first two numbers to see how to get the odd result.

        In the earth and moon scenes the union universe of earth, moon, sun,
and stars moves around the target, ship and camera at 0,0,0 with fixed
displacements to each other. It's a lot easier that way and quite an ego
boost to move the universe so freely. Of course if a camera could be
included in a union ... or if I could figure out how to include one ...

COMMENTS: 

        I know stars don't flicker viewed in space. It appears due to
inadequate sampling but with some peak times of 32 minutes per frame, I'll
live with it.

        Note the image of the earth includes the lights of the earth on the
side in darkness deliberately rather than an artifact. Moon and earth
darkside image maps were released by NASA.

        The sun side land image is from KDE World Watch under GNU copyright.
Sun side ocean, clouds and north polar ice are my addition as well as
creation of the composite.

        The odd movement of the moon back into frame in the last scene is an
artifact of procrastination. That was the worst problem with the long
rendering times getting interested in doing something else in the days some
scenes took to render. Realizing a start over quality Aw Sh*t after a scene
was completed was not encouraging.

        The five meg limit prohibited showing the moon crash into the earth;
perhaps I'll show it in "Oops: Generations." If stars can flicker, don't
bother me about celestial mechanics.

        Three species are no longer endangered as a result of this
production.

