"Markus Altendorff" <maa### [at] anthrosphinxde> wrote in message
news:3ebc0cbe@news.povray.org...
> One thing that's been puzzling me for quite a while: How many
> particles form the planet's rings at 1:30, and how long did it
> take to render?

none! :)

It's a trick. The rings of the planet are completely flat and textured with a
very complicated pigment I dreamt up. It's based on pov's crackle function, with
a slight noise pattern layered over it. That is used to cut out the silhouette
of the rocks (so there's see thru bits and solid bits). Then the "lighting" on
the rocks is faked by using the same pattern in a function, but computing very
simple lighting as if it was a bump map. I would use a real bump map but that
renders much slower than my trick. All of this means the rings render in just a
few seconds per frame.

The same pattern is used as the backdrop to the sequence inside the asteroid
field, meaning that I only needed about 20 3D asteroids, and the rest are flat
ones on the sky sphere. If you look closely you'll see none of them are moving
:)

> (2nd place! Woohoo too... :-)

Congratulations! Your entry was my favourite :)

> My opinion is that it's especially the "negative" comments that
> help with improvement.

I agree, except that I always feel kinda down if all I get are negative
comments! I feel a bit mean, always finding some fault in other people's scenes,
so I try to give some positive and some negative.

BTW, sorry I couldn't think of anything much to say on your one! I was feeling a
little uninspired. To rectify, I'll comment a bit more here, but I'll avoid
saying stuff others have said:

The camera movement seems a little excessive, it's like the Matrix at times but
that seems out of place when it's not used in an action scene. A trick I think
works well is to think about how you could move the camera if you were actually
there shooting a movie with real cameras, because people are used to seeing
footage filmed in that way.

The editing is generally good but gets a bit quick in the desert sequence. I
would expect to get lots of much longer shots emphasizing the heat and weariness
of those scenes, but instead they're shown almost as a montage. A classic shot
pointing towards the sun would be nice (i.e. with just the sun in the centre of
the frame), it's a bit cliched but it works.

And one other thought: why are your characters a big cat-woman and some girl
with wings? Maybe I missed an earlier episode where this was explained, but they
look kinda like someone's just taken a model of a nude and decided to mess
around and see what happens. I'm pretty sure that isn't the case 'cause the
cat's face is really detailed, but I'm curious about that choice of character.

--
Tek
http://www.evilsuperbrain.com

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