EMAIL: evilsnack@hotmail.com
NAME: John VanSickle
TOPIC: Duel
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Dueling Empires
WEBPAGE:  http://users4.50megs.com/enphilistor/irtc.htm
COUNTRY:  US of A
RENDERER USED:  POV-Ray 3.5 for Windows.
TOOLS USED:  Text editor, CMPEG, pencils, paper
HARDWARE USED:  Compaq Presario 2170US laptop (Celeron 2GHz, 192Meg RAM)
                Homebuilt Athlon XP 2400 (512Meg RAM)
                Toshiba Satellite laptop (Celeron 2.59GHz, 256Meg Ram)
                Homebuilt Athlon 900 (256Meg RAM)

CREATION TIME:  I got started on this project as soon as the topic was
announced.  Rendering was complete on 13 October 2004.
VIEWING RECOMMENDATION:  Full color, 24 frames per second.
ANIMATION DESCRIPTION:  The opening exchange in a war.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED:

I typed out a bunch of scene code, rendered the frames, and slapped them
together with an MPEG compiler, just like I always do.

The shuttle used by the Falkesian emissary was designed as part of an
abandoned idea for my October 2001 entry, but sat on my hard drive unused
until now; I made some minor changes to the model.

Of all my entries, this one had the most frames (3168) that were rendered only
to be used as image maps for another set of frames:

* Each video display image that isn't blank is a set of 160x120 frames
  that runs as long as the   shot in which the display is used.  There are
  1404 such frames, 1008 of which are used to show the sub-commanders, and
  the rest are used for the robot emissary.

* The shots with the warp gates required a set of frames showing the action
  in normal space, a second set of frames showing the action in warp space,
  and a third set of frames which contained a mask.  A fourth set of frames
  uses the mask to combine the first two sets.  There were 588 frames of each
  kind for a total of 1764 frames.

Total rendering stats (including repeat renderings):

2216 still frames were rendered at 800x600 while creating the models and
scenes.

1420 frames were rendered at 160x120.

17974 frames were rendered at 320x240 for animation tests.

9538 final frames were rendered at 320x240.

If you have any other questions about things, e-mail me directly, or leave
comments on the comments page (and be sure to put your e-mail address in the
comments; sometimes the bot records the wrong address).