EMAIL: shellerik@yahoo.com
NAME: Erik Shelley
TOPIC: Evolution
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Astroid Life
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: http://www.erikshelley.com/
RENDERER USED: POV-RAY 3.5
TOOLS USED: ActivePerl 5.8.0.806, Dave's Targa Animator, avi2mpg1
CREATION TIME: 2-3 weeks
HARDWARE USED: 1.73 GHz AMD
VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: Works in Windows Media Player
ANIMATION DESCRIPTION:

A lifeform is born in an astroid field. It is different than it's peers. The difference seems to help it survive. 
It passes on this diffence to its offspring.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED:

The planet, astroids, and lifeforms are all really simple. The interesting part was placing and moving so many objects. I
decided to use perl to generate the pov scene. I wrote a script to position the objects and the camera and to make sure 
there were no collisions. I didn't give myself enough time to do what I originally envisioned but I did manage to get 
enough finished to convey the main ideas.

The astroids are isosurfaces using function { f_sphere(x,y,z,1) + f_wrinkles(x+rmod,y+rmod,z+rmod) } where rmod is a 
random number generated for each astroid.

The final animation was 1300 frames which took almost 24 hours to parse and trace without antialiasing. I didn't have time
to do the whole thing with antialiasing so I had to cut the number of frames in half. It took about 40 hours to create the
final animation. The perl script and pov scene are really a mess so I decided not to provide them. I don't think there is 
anything to be learned from them.
