http://goofygraffix.com/now-showing/larrys-last-ride/

Yes, technically it's a hand-drawn animation, but I use POV-Ray exclusively to
put all the drawn PNG layers together, sequence them, scale them, rotate them,
etc.  I also use it as a master editor to put the finished frames together, and
to tell Csound when to generate audio samples.  The background starfield is the
only non-hand-drawn component -- a bunch of POV cylinders zooming past the
camera :)

I'm going to take a break for a month, then get started on an actual
computer-generated-with-POV film.

Comments welcome!

--
Dan
GoofyGraffix.com

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Dan Byers <goofygraffix_at_geemail_dot_com> wrote:
> http://goofygraffix.com/now-showing/larrys-last-ride/

  For some reason the characters reminded me of something out of Spore.

  Great game (Spore, that is), and funny animation (yours, that is).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>
>   For some reason the characters reminded me of something out of Spore.
>
>   Great game (Spore, that is), and funny animation (yours, that is).
>

Thanks :) Never heard of Spore, which is not surprising seeing as I've never
really been a gamer, although the Wii is trying its best to change that :|

--
Dan
GoofyGraffix.com

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Funny! An out-of-the-ordinary use of POV-Ray, which is always nice to see. I
took a look at your other animations; VERY creative. I'm somewhat new to POV
animation, trying to figure out 'sequencing' of events, etc. You've tackled
that and mastered it. Bravo!

Ken W.

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"Dan Byers" <goofygraffix_at_geemail_dot_com> wrote:
> http://goofygraffix.com/now-showing/larrys-last-ride/
>
> Yes, technically it's a hand-drawn animation, but I use POV-Ray exclusively to
> put all the drawn PNG layers together, sequence them, scale them, rotate them,
> etc.  I also use it as a master editor to put the finished frames together, and
> to tell Csound when to generate audio samples.  The background starfield is the
> only non-hand-drawn component -- a bunch of POV cylinders zooming past the
> camera :)
>
> I'm going to take a break for a month, then get started on an actual
> computer-generated-with-POV film.
>
> Comments welcome!
>
> --
> Dan
> GoofyGraffix.com

GNAM GNAM
I have some appetite!

great site, great animation!

--
Carlo

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"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> Funny! An out-of-the-ordinary use of POV-Ray, which is always nice to see. I
> took a look at your other animations; VERY creative. I'm somewhat new to POV
> animation, trying to figure out 'sequencing' of events, etc. You've tackled
> that and mastered it. Bravo!
>
> Ken W.

Thanks for the compliment :)  Yeah, you wouldn't normally think of using POV to
make 2-D, traditional 'cel' animations, but it's such a versatile program that
it can do it fairly easily.  All I'm doing is creating polygons for each 'cel'
layer, and a #switch( frame_number ) block to assign an appropriate image_map
as a texture for each polygon:

#local aspect_ratio = 4/3; // or 16/9 if shooting for widescreen

// Layer 1
#switch( frame_number )
  #case( 1 )      #local f_name = "alien1.png"; #break
  #range( 2, 5 )  #local f_name = "alien2.png"; #break // looking at camera
  ...
#end

polygon {
  5,
  <1,1,0>,
  <-1,1,0>,
  <-1,-1,0>,
  <1,-1,0>,
  <1,1,0>

  pigment {
    image_map {
      png f_name once interpolate 2
    }
  }
  finish {
    ambient 1 diffuse 0
  }

  translate <-.5,-.5,0>  // center the image

  // you can scale, rotate, or translate the layer as your heart
  // sees fit -- for zooming cameras, moving backgrounds, etc.
  scale <1 * aspect_ratio, 1, 1>
  rotate <...>
  translate <...>

}

// Layer 2 code
.....
// Layer 3 code
.....


global_settings {
  max_trace_level 20 // the more layers, the higher this number should be...
                     // for animatics reels, 5 or 8 is fine
  assumed_gamma 1.0  // VERY IMPORTANT!!!
}


camera {
  orthographic
  location <0,0,-10>
  up y
  right x*aspect_ratio
  angle ...
  rotate <0,0,0>
  look_at 0
}

That's it in a nutshell!  Don't forget to translate each layer slightly along
the z axis :)

--
Dan
GoofyGraffix.com

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"Carlo C." <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> GNAM GNAM
> I have some appetite!
>
> great site, great animation!
>

Thanks, Carlo :)

--
Dan
GoofyGraffix.com

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"Dan Byers" <goofygraffix_at_geemail_dot_com> wrote:

> Thanks for the compliment :)  Yeah, you wouldn't normally think of using POV to
> make 2-D, traditional 'cel' animations, but it's such a versatile program that
> it can do it fairly easily.  All I'm doing is creating polygons for each 'cel'
> layer, and a #switch( frame_number ) block to assign an appropriate image_map
> as a texture for each polygon:

Thanks for the great tips; very much appreciated. I've lately been looking at
#switch #case #break for my own animations, but in all my years of POV'ing,
I've never actually used them very much at all. Don't ask me why, I have no
good excuse.  :-(   Now I see their usefulness.

>
> global_settings {
>   max_trace_level 20 // the more layers, the higher this number should be...
>                      // for animatics reels, 5 or 8 is fine
>   assumed_gamma 1.0  // VERY IMPORTANT!!!
> }

Something I've noticed about .png images is that, IF they have an embedded gamma
of 1.0, they seem to show up OK across a 'range' of POV's assumed_gamma values.
I once tried an experiment of varying assumed_gamma from .5 up to 3.0, and,
within a *certain* range, a .png image still looked good, almost identical. Not
near the extremes, though.  So the image does seem to be 'in love with' a
certain assumed_gamma value...probably 1.0, as you say. (I generally use 2.0
for all my scenes, for my own reasons, and the .png image looks the way it
should, to my eyes; but I'll re-experiment with that.)

KW

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Okay, last word on this film: I have some test reels showing the animatics and
pencil roughs phases on my website (goofygraffix.com).  Feel free to check them
out.  Comments welcome :)

--
Dan
GoofyGraffix.com

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