"Thomas de Groot" <tDOTdegroot@interDOTnlANOTHERDOTnet> wrote:
> Truly amazing work, Kenneth. I am literally speachless.
>

Thank you, Thomas. I feel the same way about your work, and always look forward
to seeing what you've come up with.

KW

Post a reply to this message

Chris Cason <del### [at] deletethistoopovrayorg> wrote:

> I can host it on povray.org in a temp dir if you like. pop me an email if so.
>

Thanks, Chris!  A very nice offer; I'll contact you.

Ken

Post a reply to this message

>Kenneth  on date 25/03/2010 05:03 wrote:
> Four months in the making! With a cast of thousands! (of objects)
>
The animation is really great! Superb!
Paolo

Post a reply to this message

"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> Thank you! I have a few time-saving 'tools' that I've constructed over the last
> couple of years that I regularly use now in my animations (and that I've been
> *meaning* to post.) The shaking-camera look comes from one such tool, basically
> a random-spline generator--a macro (but designed for animation). I've since
> discovered that it has MANY more uses. It's all over this scene, in various
> places--the contrails, the dipping/turning of the airplane, etc. Sometimes
> modified, sometimes not. In fact, this scene helped me 'optimize' the code for
> it.
>
> The ground is just a B&W satellite image (of Paris!) that I 'colorized', and
> applied to a plane, with some movement of the image_map in z. There are also
> tens of thousands of buildings down there (simple boxes, in random sizes and
> groupings)--which really can't be seen too clearly. But the ground just didn't
> look 'correct' without them--kind of a subliminal detail. I guess.
>
> Ken

This animation keeps drawing me back - I can't stop watching it and studying the
details. Your random spline generator is fascinating because the motion of the
planes is so realistic. What a great example of a cool solution to a problem
that works out so well. (By "Problem," I just mean figuring out how to achieve
the results you want.) I think I enjoy this animation so much for two totally
different reasons. First for its artistic excellence; and secondly but maybe
even more importantly, because we all know that a project of this magnitude
requires so much thought, planning, and ingenious solutions along the way, the
results of which can be "seen" by other POV users just as clearly as the image
itself.

SO... It's very interesting to know more details of how the animation was
created. Please feel free to share more!

Regards,
Dave Blandston

Post a reply to this message

"Dave Blandston" <nomail@nomail> wrote:

> SO... It's very interesting to know more details of how the animation was
> created. Please feel free to share more!
>

Thanks indeed for your thoughtful comments.  I guess each of us 'toils in
solitude' while trying to creating something worthwhile in POV-Ray, spending
untold hours on it--so it's definitely nice to see that the work is appreciated
(even with its flaws.)

And now that you've asked... :-)  :-)  :-)

I added my own 'fake ambient occlusion' TEXTURE to the B-29--using a simple
'shadowing' technique that I picked up from the newsgroups. I made that as a
separate render--by placing LOTS of lights around a white B-29, with a white
background. In Photoshop, I inverted the image, made it into an alpha-channel
(with the 'real' image there being black) then applied that in POV-Ray as a
typical planar image_map, projected from above onto the final airplane. Far from
perfect--in fact, a rather amateurish attempt at AO!-- but it adds a tiny bit
more realism. (I'll be glad to post the image_map, to show what I mean.)

The puffy clouds are probably the thing I'm most proud of (in how they solved a
parsing-and-render-time problem, while still looking decent.)  As mentioned,
they're not media--which would have taken forever to render--but turbulated
image_maps projected onto simple scaled spheres. Actually, I used just *one*
(rather exacting) alpha-channel image_map, which was then run through some
randomized turbulence code inside a cloud-generating #while loop, before being
applied to a particular sphere--so each cloud looks different, more or less.
(The turbulence is even animated, so the clouds 'change' over time. It's very
subtle, though.) BTW, I pre-#declared the raw image_map as a pigment (before the
#while loop) which saves *considerable* time during parsing--similar in concept
to instancing multiple copies of a triangle mesh. So even though each cloud does
get its own 'texture', 600 clouds parse almost as fast as one. Without that
pre-#declare step, the cloud-parsing was *slow* and memory-intensive.

What appears to be self-shadowing under each cloud is actually built into my
image_map artwork--the clouds have a simple finish{ambient 1 diffuse 0} to
faithfully reproduce the image's tone values. (IMO, that image_map still needs
some tweaking--the clouds don't have as much gray-scale detail as I'd like.)

Along the way, I re-discovered something interesting about image_maps and
turbulence: Since I used the typical map_type 0 for projecting the image onto
each sphere, the image naturally shows up on both front and rear surfaces. But
turbulence operates on the image in 3-D space--it's added *after* the
projection, so to speak--so I get two *different* looks on each cloud. Nice!
Since the camera can see some of the rear image through the front one, it adds
'complexity' to each cloud's appearance. Then the animated movement and
motion-blur help give it a quasi-volumetric look. Of course, the front-and-rear
surfaces of each cloud need to remain more or less in line with the camera view.
Otherwise, *distinct* front/back images would be apparent. (Perhaps they still
are!)

Ken

Post a reply to this message

"Dave Blandston" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> ...we all know that a project of this magnitude
> requires so much thought, planning...

Planning?? :-[

I wish I could YES to that, but...

The scene started out as just a far-less-detailed airplane and the ground. Which
I animated.  "Wow!  Cool!", I thought. I was about ready to sign-off on the
project(!) at that point. (It was just an experiment for my own pleasure.)  Then
I added some clouds--really cheesy ones, just a bozo pigment on another plane.
"Wow! Cool!", I thought. And was about ready to sign-off on *that*!

Then one detail led to another...(and one coding challenge led to another.)

It's quite a mystery that something 'worthwhile' can develop from such a
skeleton-like beginning. Hard to know when to continue or when to stop! Of
course, as such a scene develops, it starts showing the 'holes' that need
filling. Then it becomes a matter of not wanting to post the scene until it
looks 'good enough' to present to the user community. THEN it becomes a matter
of not wanting to post it until it's PERFECT!!!!!!   ;-0

Post a reply to this message

"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] earthlinknet> wrote in message 
news:web.4baaf576ae0d85565f302820@news.povray.org...
> "Dre" <and### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>
>
>> Holy crap!  Consider me impressed!  Very impressed!!!
>>
>
> Thanks! It was a labor of love--well, sort of, after solving umpteen 
> problems.
> But big scenes are always 'instructive'--I always learn some new things 
> (and
> they really give POV-Ray a workout, clarifying its strengths and 
> weaknesses.)
>
>
>
I've just watched the animation, thats AWESOME!  Really well done!

Cheers Dre

Post a reply to this message

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

Post a reply to this message

FlyerX <fly### [at] yahoocom> wrote:

> The image is really good with good attention to detail. Those engine
> nacelles being CSG must have been a feat to model.

Thanks. Yeah, they gave me no end of trouble (and they're still not right.)
Cylinders, spheres, tori. I've amassed a bunch of engine images off the web, and
the front nacelle--with all its complex curvatures--has proved a bear. I *may*
have to go with a mesh object instead. Haven't quite given up yet, though!

> But where is the animation? Is not in the animations group.

???
It's there when I go there. (Don't know if this matters: I'm using Firefox as my
web browser, on a Windows XP machine.)  The file has a .dat container added (by
the newsgroup server?), which *may* be a source of trouble; but when I click on
it's link, I can still get it to play, by browsing to Windows Media Player.

> Why not post it to YouTube or Vimeo where more people can see it?

Good question. I guess because (at present) I don't feel 'comfortable' with
posting stuff to Youtube, for various reasons. (That's not being very logical or
practical, I admit.) I've also heard (perhaps unfounded rumors) that Youtube
recompresses the video to be of inferior quality(?) Honestly, I haven't taken
the time to learn much about it.

Ken

Post a reply to this message

"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> It's quite a mystery that something 'worthwhile' can develop from such a
> skeleton-like beginning. Hard to know when to continue or when to stop! Of
> course, as such a scene develops, it starts showing the 'holes' that need
> filling. Then it becomes a matter of not wanting to post the scene until it
> looks 'good enough' to present to the user community. THEN it becomes a matter
> of not wanting to post it until it's PERFECT!!!!!!   ;-0

Hmmm, that's how scenes seem to develop, but I don't have any hesitation about
posting things that are far from perfect... (As everyone has probably noticed!)

Regards,
Dave Blandston

Post a reply to this message