TITLE: Trapped!

NAME: Tim Cuthbertson
COUNTRY: Australia

EMAIL: tim_cutho@smileyface.com
WEBPAGE: www.tim3d.com

TOPIC: Slow Motion.
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: trapped.mpg
RENDERER USED: 
    3D Studio Max R3.1 (student version)


TOOLS USED: 

AVI2MPG1(mpeg conversion)
VirtualDub(sound addition)
MS Paint (joining segments of the board image map)

Microsoft Sound Recorder (sound recording and editing)

Flash (used solely for making the stereo sound more realistic - done manually)



CREATION TIME: 
    Not as long as I expected. The main models (no textures or
animation) only took me 15 days during the school holidays, and then once
school started I slowly worked on it mostly at weekends, until it was done. I
then added some props, fixed up textures, and voila! All that I had to do was
sound, which was a bit of a nightmare. . .

As for the rendering time, It took roughly 12 and 1/2 hours for the full render
(820 frames, includes reflections, shadows, FOV, and Antialiasing). I have not
edited this in any way, except for adding sound and converting to an mpeg
file.


HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium III 800, Microphone, Scanner.


ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 


When I first thought of the mousetrap, I wanted to slow it all down, so that you
can see everything that happened in slow motion, the whole game. I did this,
but then it just looked boring. You could have done the same by just slowing
down the framerate. So I decided that I'd make the most important part in slow
motion. I think the green diver is the most important, because it's kind of the
final deciding point, like either it hits the bucket and the net goes down, or
it might not hit the bucket hard enough. That was what I would always wonder
when I was a little kid, would it set the net off. . .

I've tried to make it as realistic as possible, I hope you like it :-)


VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 
    I worked very hard on the sound, so it'd be good if you
had the sound on (and stereo speakers).


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 


Well, I can't really go into detail about how I made each object, it'd be way
too long.

The basic method I used for most of the models is to make a basic object (box,
usually), and then convert it to a polygon mesh. From there, I use max's tools
to edit the shape, and I make a good low-poly version of the object. I then
apply a "meshsmooth" modifier, to make it look less jagged and more smooth.
There are lots more things I did with individual objects, but like I said
before, it'd take too long to describe here.
Oh yeah, all the objects were made entirely from scratch by me for this
project.

For the animation part, I did all of it by hand. I did try to use Max's dynamics
tools to do a bit of it, but that just caused me great frustration, and didn't
work at all really. I ended up scrapping that bit, and doing it by hand as
well, which acxtually only took me 1/4 of the time I had been trying to get the
dynamics to work. I think it's more realistic as well, because unfortunately
max's dynamics have lots of bugs.

The sound was all recorded manually, except for the background track. This was a
free loop I downloaded from www.orlamusic.com

The first time I did the sound, I just used MS sound recorder, but the volume
levels weren't right, along with some other things. I needed more flexibility,
so I decided to use flash. This was I could make a new layer for each
individual sound effect, and I could move them around so that they overlap as
well. Another important feature is that I could individually edit the sound
levels in each of the speakers, which means that the sounds are in stereo, and
i have tried to match eatch sound effect up to sound like it's comming from the
right place.





Finally, I had to compress the whole thing to mpeg-1 in under 5mb. I did have
quite a few troubles doing this, but I overcame them eventually.

I actually emailed the admins after the last round, suggesting that the
competition should use a different codec, instead of the outdated mpeg-1. I
think that "Divx ;-)" Is a good, cross-platform option, but I'm not sure what
programs exist to encode it.

If you do have Divx, please take a look at the high quality divx version of this
animation at http://tim3d.50megs.com/mtrap.html - It's only 6.6mb, and a lot
better quality.




So there you have it, if you would like to know more, just email me at
tim_cutho@smileyface.com :-)




Thanks for reading, now enjoy the video!!!

