TITLE: 8 Ball's Journey
NAME: Matt Giwer
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: jull43@tampabay.rr.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.giwersworld.org/artii/ & artiii/ & artiv/
TOPIC: journey
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: 8balljrn.mpg
ZIPFILE: 8balljrn.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    povray 3.1g and 3.5

TOOLS USED: 
    gimp, mpeg_encode
RENDER TIME:        80 hr or so

HARDWARE USED: 
    Athlon 1800XP, 256M RAM, linux 2.4.18-3 kernel
         Celeron 400, 64M, linux 2.4.18-3 kernel
         PII 333, 128M, linux 2.4.18-3 kernel

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

        A lonely 8 Ball tired of getting kicked in the backside has an
adventure on his way home. Along the way he (or she or it, your choice
angels are smooth between the legs, 8 Ball is smooth all over) has a trip
through the special effects museum in Hollywood.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

        The emphasis here was to make the journey a WOW! experience rather
than a plot line. Over the years I have worked on models of SF favorites and
not so favorites. Interestingly Star Trek and Babylon 5 do have not really
memorable images.

        Absent decent human figure modeling capability in Povray I kept the
moving object about as simple as possible and remain visually interesting
albeit a bit confusing at times. But then Hollywood also uses different
models for different scenes.

        It can also be looked at as a mixed metaphor of science fiction
productions -- a link between new and old. When the pros do this, as in
Babylon 5 with the Krell scene, they call it a paean rather than lack of
creativity or plagiarism. Does this make me a pro?  append smiley 

        The wormhole trip is from inside a torus with a rotating image map
created with the Gimp, rendered clouds mapped seamless. I could say the
method of creating the forward and back movement, as in CONTACT, was the
product of hours of pains taking creative effort but in fact it is an
artifact like wheels moving backward in the movies.

        Render time was on the order 80 hours. That may seem excessive but I
chose more visually interesting models rather than those which would render
rapidly. For example the rings coming down took about 10 hours on the Athlon
but it was given only 920f the CPU due to other tasks. But on the other
machines it would have been a day and a half. So any time estimate is a Mr.
Hankey estimate. The symbols on the Stargate is difference rather than
union, incised vice excised as in the TV series, which takes longer to
render but frankly more realistic.

        I used different versions on different scenes simply because some of
my code didn't work with 3.5 and didn't feel like taking the time to fix the
problem. Better is the enemy of good enough. In an animation it is most
important to make an animation work before improving what is in the scene.  

        The 8balljrn.zip file contains some representative code. All the
code without instructions on how to put it together would likely be useless
anyway. The font klingon_.ttf is useful for producing things with alien
language symbols and labels. They are the symbols on the Stargate. The file
sg.pov is nearly everything you see in the Stargate segment. Also included
is the image file for the wormhole and the 8 ball.

        Each scene is a separate file. The Stargate sequence is seven
distinct scenes eight counting arrival. This is a trade-off between trying to
control everything from start to finish in one file and doing it
conveniently. It is great to be able to do something with one long
contiguous sequence of scene numbers but when that gets too hard it should
be broken up in separate scenes.

        The mpeg_encode utility permits more flexibility than is generally
realized. An interim parameter file is included in the .zip file. The scenes
can be put together with any names and number from many subdirectories in
any order even repeating individual frames to tweak scenes. Although the
Stargate scenes were designed to be sequential and frame number parts of it
get #if'd and comment out for convenience which will not be apparent on
cursory inspection. And it is filled with things tried but not used and
commented out.

        The pool table is unusual but I saw something like on a local TV ad.
I lusted but did not bother to call for a price. I have not looked at my
traditional style table the same since.

Stargate

        The Stargate rendering time is excessive. I started watching the
show and the great detail in the close up shots does not appear to be
reflected in the long shots. This is animation with renderers as a tool.
Different models for close and far is what the big boys do, which I will
keep in mind for next competition, see rendering time. The ring sequences
are 22 total hours an the Athlon.

        To have enough time rolling for the viewer to almost wonder when
something is going to happen just before the rings drop I needed a simple
background to keep the file size down. This trade-off worked.

        Watching the SciFi Channel and Fox reruns and the new (for the US)
eps and the original movie the action of the rings varies. If you don't like
mine you are not comparing it to the right one. If you still don't like it,
consider it another variation.

Forbidden Planet

        Ah the Krell, those fun loving good ol' boys, you have to love the
machinery they created. The rumor is after they ran out of oil they kept on
digging. The lightning used a routine by Jeffry J. Brickley for Povray 3.02
modified to work with 3.1 mainly be excluding things which didn't work.
Pardon if I suggest that while I created a simplified shaft I added something
the movie forgot, the light of the electric arc changing the lighting on the
people on the catwalk. To each his own version of reality.

        The long roll in the previous scene with the two flashes is a lead
up to this scene. The flashes are an expectation. 

The Day the Earth Stood Still

        I have no apologies. That is how it was done in the movie. And
Rennie's ship was bigger inside than outside too. Tardis technology inside
no doubt. Yes, the White House is to the right (north) of the Washington
Monument in the approach scene.

Not so Frozen Moment in Time

        This is a take off on my recent entry in the stills competition,
Frozen Moment in Time. A joke on itself and using pre-existing models. Goes
to show creating them with a view towards eventual animation pays off. A
couple hours to work out the motion and 20+ hours to render. And besides
knocking down the Washington MOnuMENT is a bit of a tradition for flying
saucers. Yes, it is a bad pun.

Oz

        How to get home was a problem as only This Island Earth shows that
and that would have been a bit of work for a not so identifiable ship. And
then there is nothing particularly memorable about Metaluna to use to set
the scene. When in doubt, use magic. 

Lessons learned

        * Storyboard the scenes. 

        A Scene is a sequence of images to make part of the animation not
single image and in stills terminology.

        Work out the entire sequence as completely as possible first. Break
it out into individual scenes for each story board sequence. which leads
to...

        * Render each scene at low quality first. 

        Each scene that has been reduced to even simple models is rendered
through the entire scene sequence to get the motions right. Assemble these
scenes into the finished animation and view it. The low quality permits the
draft scene to be rendered quickly. This has always been advice for stills
but with faster machines it is likely forgotten and very useful for
animations. 

        Only when everything is right in the animation and when the models
are sufficiently complex are the individual scenes rendered at full quality
and reviewed. They are dropped into the assembled animation sequence and
viewed to see it all fits together properly.

        * Why? (Because that is all Zooty ever said.)

        If you have ever been half way through rendering a long series of
images and getting it wrong you know the frustration. The frustration leads
to giving up for days and then trying to remember what you were doing. On
the bright side, seeing how things move first leads to ways to improve it,
even simplify things.

        Rendering in high quality one scene at a time seeing it in the whole
lets you see it grow and gives a feeling of accomplishment along the way for
encouragement. It also gives you something to show off to friends and
competitors for comment.

Fans and Enemies

        Yes, there are a few glitches which I could not figure how to
correct. In the movies they are what fans look for so consider them Easter
Eggs rather than errors. If you are looking for reasons to downgrade it,
just take a close look. 

Of interest: 

        For linux users, ImageMagick comes with a routine "animate" which
creates a sequence of images and shows them in an endless loop. It was a
very useful tool for a quick check without creating an mpeg.

        Mpeg_encode will take both lossless and JPEG images but permits only
one format in assembling the animation. It does its own JPEG conversion of
lossless images before including it in the animation. But if the animation
gets too large for the competition based on size rather than time the
rendered images can be converted before encoding to JPEG at a lower quality
level and JPEG specified in the script. This should be used with caution and
with side by side comparisons.

        Quality is less important in animations as persistence of vision
blurs differences. It is also less important the faster the motion depicted
and in very simple scenes. That works out nicely as the greater the
difference between frames the greater the resultant mpeg size.

        This can also reduce the file size of particular scenes. A simple
script can go to a lower quality JPG and then back to the lossless format.
It does not have to be applied to all scenes. 

        And my apologies if there is a quality setting in mpeg_encode but I
have not found mention of it in the docs.

        Also a complete animation can be made creating an mpeg for each
scene and combining individual scene mpegs as in 

        cat scene1.mpg scene2.mpg > scenes12.mpg 

        In other words scene1.mpg can be created with QSCALEs I P B of 2 5
10 from PPM files and scene2.mpg with scales of 5 6 11 from JPG files with
no compatibility problems.

        Obviously this saves time in creating long animations. It permits
you to review scene sequential scenes in seconds not tens of minutes to
nearly an hour on the Athlon for some 8000 frames. 

        It also permits controlling quality/size by changing the QSCALE
factors for each scene. It can also use the quality/size trick by lower
quality JPEG above without converting back to the original format.

===

        To the children, a reminder.

<quote>
  Etiquette

   This describes the intentions of the competition and what we hope to
   gain from it.

    c. The competition is not about winning. You do not have to be a
       professional, or even any good! 
</quote>

        I assure everyone, I am no damn good.

