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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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

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"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

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On 3/25/2010 5:03 PM, Kenneth wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
I was looking into the wrong newsgroup. The animation is really good. It 
does give the impression of what a tail gunner would be seeing while 
this aircraft tries to stay in formation.

I still think you should post it publicly for everyone to see. Vimeo.com 
may be a better fit for this animation.

FlyerX

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Is there an animations Hall of Fame?  If not, there should be, and this 
should be on it.  Amazing work, Kenneth.  I'm blown away.

You've shared a little about some of your tricks, but I'm anxious to 
hear more!  So the clouds are just spheres with textures!?  I would 
never have known, especially since you see the planes coming through 
them naturally enough.

What about the flames?  Very realistic!  Rendering flames in POV is 
difficult enough as a still image, let alone animated, flying through 
the air at 150 mph.  Again, I'm very impressed.

Beyond the technical aspects, the scened is very aesthetically 
appealing.  The bright orange flames serve as an excellent highlight 
against the turquoise of the sky and cockpit.  I love the reflections on 
the hull, and the textures in general are very realistic.

Thanks for making this masterpiece, and thanks for sharing it.

Kirk

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FlyerX <fly### [at] yahoocom> wrote:

> I was looking into the wrong newsgroup. The animation is really good. It
> does give the impression of what a tail gunner would be seeing while
> this aircraft tries to stay in formation.

YES, my idea too. (For one of my early test animations, I actually placed the
camera inside a tail gunner bubble.  It was faked, though-- just an image_map
overlay that looked like aluminum struts, applied during the motion-blur
post-processing step, with *some* matching movement to 'blend it in.' It looked
interesting, but needed real geometry. Didn't pursue it at the time...) One good
thing that came out of the experiment was discovering that I could use my
motion-blur code to do compositing with. BTW, the code is, at its core, just a
pigment_map set-up using 'average'--with some bells and whistles to automate the
process. I do plan on posting it.
>
> I still think you should post [the animation] publicly for everyone to see.
 > Vimeo.com may be a better fit for this animation.

I'll look into that; not familiar with it.

Ken

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Kirk Andrews <kir### [at] tektonartcom> wrote:
> Is there an animations Hall of Fame?  If not, there should be, and this
> should be on it.  Amazing work, Kenneth.  I'm blown away.

**blush**  Thank you. But it has so many flaws!!!!!  :-O  That's mostly all I
see, anyway. Have looked at it too many times. (It brings to mind a comment I
read, concerning the CGI robots in one of the TRANSFORMERS movies. A CG
supervisor on the project basically said it would take about 100 years to
correct *all* the missing textures and other small problems that they knew to be
there. So even the pros aren't satisfied with their best work.)
>
> You've shared a little about some of your tricks, but I'm anxious to
> hear more!  So the clouds are just spheres with textures!?  I would
> never have known, especially since you see the planes coming through
> them naturally enough.

Ah, you've touched on part of the scene code that took me awhile to work
out--making sure the clouds didn't show up inside the glass cockpit as they
passed over and through it. (The clouds aren't in a union, they're just
individual objects.) Figuring out how to do a good differencing scheme (while
keeping parse time low) was fun. I basically set up a trace operation, from
inside the B-29 looking out toward the nose. The trace ray(s) were shot to a
location in front of the B-29 (but not too far out.)  Only if a particular cloud
sphere got close to the nose and in-line with it was a CSG difference
triggered--but not differenced from the entire airplane. Instead, the
differencing object is a simple cockpit-shaped sphere (and short cylinder) that
moves along with the bomber. The result is *no* CSG most of the time--and not
from the entire airplane in any case. Yeah, the clouds ARE inside the plane's
fuselage, wings, etc.--but unseen.
>
> What about the flames?  Very realistic!  Rendering flames in POV is
> difficult enough as a still image, let alone animated, flying through
> the air at 150 mph.  Again, I'm very impressed.

Thanks.  I went through umpteen different schemes to get something that looked
*decent* but would still render fast.  I ended up by using just a texture
applied to a union of bumpy spheres. But the set-up is rather complex, and
*depends* on the motion-blur to look right. The texture relies on multi-stage
pigment_maps to get those moving 'voids' or flame-outs. In a nutshell: an
initial pigment has some rgbt 1 voids of a certain size; then that's used in a
pigment map with even larger voids--etc. Repeated three times. Then animated to
move across the spheres, of course. And that sphere object actually 'breates' in
and out during the 4000-frame animation run--increasing in size (x and y only)
every ten frames, then decreasing over the next ten. The total result is a sort
of volumetric blurring of the flames, when motion-blur is performed later. The
downside of the blurring is that the flame colors become somewhat muted--they
look more intense in a still image.
>
> Beyond the technical aspects, the scened is very aesthetically
> appealing.  The bright orange flames serve as an excellent highlight
> against the turquoise of the sky and cockpit.  I love the reflections on
> the hull, and the textures in general are very realistic.

What I was trying to create with this scene was a sort of 'painterly' look--with
somewhat heightened colors and such. (I was inspired by a B-29 painting I saw at
a local air museum--the colors were vivid and somewhat unrealistic--yet BETTER
than real!) But there's a fine line that I tried not to cross: This scene's NOT
a painting, but hard-edged 3-D shapes. So I could only take the idea so far.
>
> Thanks for making this masterpiece, and thanks for sharing it.

Happy to see that it's appreciated!

Ken

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> Four months in the making! With a cast of thousands! (of objects)

   This image is very nice, but the animation is amazing, almost beyond the
AWSOME ROLEX level... Maybe there are flaws, but I cannot spot any, and I
tried a lot of times. The whole action is so convincing that it is very
difficult to do something more that just enjoying it with the mouth totally
open...

-- 
Jaime Vives Piqueres

http://www.ignorancia.org

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Jaime Vives Piqueres <jai### [at] ignoranciaorg> wrote:

>    This image is very nice, but the animation is amazing, almost beyond the
> AWSOME ROLEX level... Maybe there are flaws, but I cannot spot any, and I
> tried a lot of times. The whole action is so convincing that it is very
> difficult to do something more that just enjoying it with the mouth totally
> open...

Wow--thank you.  Coming from 'the master,' that is high praise indeed.
(Honestly, I don't think I could ever hope to match the level of your work.)
Your's is the 'standard candle' that I--and surely many others--aspire to.

While working on this scene, a rather 'uncomfortable' idea began to nag me: With
all of the *cheating* and tricks that I was coming up with--to reduce render
time--it also became apparent that I was kind of getting further and further
away from using POV-Ray's core ray-tracing strengths. E.g, transparency, media,
shadowing--there's very little of each. No AA either. And lots of image_maps,
with few procedural textures.

It left me feeling that I wasn't giving POV-Ray a fair chance to show itself
off. (But again, it was done solely because I wanted a relatively
quick-to-render animation; if this had been a still image from the get-go, I
wouldn't have bothered with trying to *cheat* so many things.)

Perhaps I'm being
too harsh on myself. I really have no idea if a typical scan-line renderer (like
Lightwave?) could produce the visual level of even this 'stripped-down' scene.
And of course, POV's SDL language is the core strength, such a tremendous tool
for creating and modifying just about anything I can think of--I don't think ANY
other app could match that. (Any other FREE program!) Not to mention POV's
amazing and realistic lighting ability--and reflections--two core assets that my
scene depends on.

OK, I feel better already!  :-)

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Kenneth wrote:
> Jaime Vives Piqueres <jai### [at] ignoranciaorg> wrote:
> 
> OK, I feel better already!  :-)
> 
> 

What's the url to the picture ?
-- 
--
Eric

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