On 3/24/2010 11:03 PM, Kenneth wrote:
> Four months in the making! With a cast of thousands! (of objects)
>
> Here's a representative image from an animation which I've posted over at
> p.b.animations. I set this scene up with animation and motion-blur in mind, so a
> still image doesn't really show it to its best advantage, IMO. Everything was
> done in POV-Ray v3.6.1, including the post-processed motion-blur (none here,
> though.) OK, I used Photoshop for some image_maps, and sPatch for a few mesh
> objects in the B-29--the wings and tail. The airplane isn't perfect; the CSG
> engines still need some work, as does the nose/cockpit. When I started this
> project, I wasn't all that interested in getting the B-29 to be technically
> accurate; I just wanted a 'flying scene.' But one thing led to another...
>
> My apologies for not posting any WIPs during the process--I kept changing/adding
> things daily, even hourly. Which meant running yet more test animations. (At
> last count, 153 of 'em!) Helped along with LOTS of on/off #if switches for
> testing various things, plus simple 'proxy' objects.
>
> There are quite a few *cheats* going on here--the clouds, the many reflections
> in the airplane, the cloud shadows on it, the flames. Some to get a particular
> visual effect, but mainly to speed up rendering during the *long* animation
> run--4000 frames over 90 hours, to get 400 final motion-blurred images. No AA
> either (except for this image); but blurring together each 10-image batch helped
> hide the jaggies. The only media in the scene is the black smoke behind the
> flaming engine (and only because I couldn't come up with a good cheat for that!)
>
> About mid-way through rendering the raw animation, I hit on the rather bizarre
> idea of doing 'alternate-field' renders, again to save time.  That is, using
> Field_Render in the INI file.  That cut the remaining render time in half--with
> a decrease in image quality, of course. For a typical still frame, the results
> are quite ugly (especially with no AA!) But 10 such frames blurred together
> didn't look half-bad, in the context of the quickly-moving animation. (After
> doing a final motion-blurred animation test, I picked out the frames that still
> didn't look very good, then went back and re-rendered the raw frames without
> Field_Render.)
>
> I'll add more notes as the comments come rolling in. ;-)

The image is really good with good attention to detail. Those engine 
nacelles being CSG must have been a feat to model. But where is the 
animation? Is not in the animations group. Why not post it to YouTube or 
Vimeo where more people can see it?

FlyerX

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