TITLE: Microcosms
NAME: Neil Alexander
COUNTRY: Canada
EMAIL: stoker@echo-on.net
WEBPAGE: none
TOPIC: Microcosms
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: cosmsna.mpg
ZIPFILE: cosmsna.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray 3.1 for Windows

TOOLS USED: 
    Paintshop Pro for movie poster and processing of
            some image maps, AutoCAD for an image map
            CMPEG to compile the animation.

CREATION TIME: 
    3 months - I didn't track the render time

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium II 233MHz 64Mb ram

ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 

This animation takes the viewer through several progressively smaller 
worlds from the everyday "macrocosm" down to the nuclues of an atom.
We start looking at the outside of a house (my house, actually), and
see a cat (my cat Cassidy) in the window watching the birds. We then
move inside, and see a flea jump from the cat's back. The flea leads
us to a dust mite on a nearby chair. We enter the dust mite's mouth to
find microbes digesting cells. Inside such a cell, we see protein 
molecules being extracted from the cell's nucleus.  We enter an atom
on a protein chain, and zoom in to the nucleus.


VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 
    Activemovie

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 

  My original intention with this animation was to do the whole thing
with a single camera; ie with no obvious scene cuts.  I found, however,
that a constantly moving camera led to very poor Mpeg compression - my
first 6 seconds used up over 2 Mb - and I decided that I would have to
have cuts to different camera views.
  In my last animation, I tried to keep the modelling relatively simple 
to allow fast rendering.  This time, I wanted to focus on more detailed 
modelling, putting in as much detail as I would for a still image.
  Most of the modelling is straightforward CSG.  The organic shapes,
such as the birds, cat, flea, mite, etc. are blob models.  I found the
new macro feature very useful for animated objects, allowing me to use
"pose" variables when placing the objects.
  Some of the objects, particularly items in the livingroom, were 
modelled with POV 3.0.  The new features in 3.1 would have simplified
the code for these objects, but I didn't have the time or inclination
to rewrite them.
  I found that POV-Ray acts differently at different scales.  Several
times I would get strange effects, such as small-scaled objects not
casting shadows, which would not occur if I rescaled my scene so that
the offending object was closer to a unit-length size.  I also found
media objects to be particularly vulnerable to scale effects.  When I
tried to scale my cyan-colored atom a few orders of magnitude larger,
it turned red. If my atoms were scaled too small, they would not appear
at all. As you can imagine, this led to a great deal of frustration
before I figured out the cause.
  I have included all files required to render this animation in the
zip file except for the image maps (rug and gable).  Also, the credits
require the true type font HandelGothicBT to my moved into the Include
folder.
  One note about the cat; Cassidy does really have a stubby tail.  This
was not a short-cut (no pun intended) to avoid modelling the tail.