Hi,

two things:

a)
- 13 days until the next deadline/topic at http://tc-rtc.co.uk/
- Nothing new on the IRTC main page.
But you knew that already, didn't you?

b) i'm a bit unsure how the voting on the TC-RTC website 
works. There's the upload time limit, and one can vote 
during the upload time (i.e. while the round is still 
incomplete). Is there some "after-closing" timeframe where 
one can continue to vote? i.e. someone's *cough* entry that 
will definitely need to be submitted very very close to the 
deadline can not be voted on at all if voting closes with 
the deadline, too ;)

Any insights on this?

-Markus

-- 

<grins madly, waves album of preview images, ignoring groans 
from the audience>

The apprentice and the robe:
http://wip.anthrosphinx.de/episode010/20070815_223935_snap_81575.jpg

Oooh, mysterious drawing on the dungeon floor:
http://wip.anthrosphinx.de/episode010/20070818_121445_snap_44085.jpg

Whoops, that's not supposed to happen:
http://wip.anthrosphinx.de/episode010/20070818_122241_snap_44561.jpg

Post a reply to this message

"Markus Altendorff" <maa### [at] anthrosphinxde> wrote in message 
news:46c6cf9a$1@news.povray.org...
> Hi,

   Hi Markus


>
> two things:
>
> a)
> - 13 days until the next deadline/topic at http://tc-rtc.co.uk/
> - Nothing new on the IRTC main page.
> But you knew that already, didn't you?


    Of course! :o)  My friend, if I had control of it, it would all be 
there - everything. But I don't have control, even though I'm the owner (no, 
we're the owner). This thing is out of my league in the coding department at 
the moment. BUT, that's not to say that I can't learn. ;) I've seen what it 
looks like on the screen, and I think I can handle it. (We'll see!)  ;)



>
> b) i'm a bit unsure how the voting on the TC-RTC website works. There's 
> the upload time limit, and one can vote during the upload time (i.e. while 
> the round is still incomplete). Is there some "after-closing" timeframe 
> where one can continue to vote? i.e. someone's *cough* entry that will 
> definitely need to be submitted very very close to the deadline can not be 
> voted on at all if voting closes with the deadline, too ;)
>
> Any insights on this?

    This has more or less been put to me in email too, and all I can say is 
that Colin is thinking about it. He is aware of this problem, but finds it 
an 'interesting' problem. His initial response was "Let's run it as it is 
for 6 months first."  -  "Let's see what happens." I kind of agree with this 
because for a start, there won't be many animations, and there won't be many 
stills, (not like the heyday of the IRTC - (I think I've seen 80+ images in 
one round), but, with the help of you guys, this just might change.

       I'll keep you (all) updated where and when  I can.



    (Don't go just yet Markus, see below...)



>
> -Markus
>
> -- 
>
> <grins madly, waves album of preview images, ignoring groans from the 
> audience>
>
> The apprentice and the robe:
> http://wip.anthrosphinx.de/episode010/20070815_223935_snap_81575.jpg
>
> Oooh, mysterious drawing on the dungeon floor:
> http://wip.anthrosphinx.de/episode010/20070818_121445_snap_44085.jpg
>
> Whoops, that's not supposed to happen:
> http://wip.anthrosphinx.de/episode010/20070818_122241_snap_44561.jpg




     Man, those are good. That's all I can say.    :oO

       ~Steve~

Post a reply to this message

St. wrote:
> "Markus Altendorff" <maa### [at] anthrosphinxde> wrote in message 
> news:46c6cf9a$1@news.povray.org...
>> Hi,
> 
>    Hi Markus
> 
> 
>> two things:
>>
>> a)
>> - 13 days until the next deadline/topic at http://tc-rtc.co.uk/
>> - Nothing new on the IRTC main page.
>> But you knew that already, didn't you?
> 
> 
>     Of course! :o)  My friend, if I had control of it, it would all be 
> there - everything. But I don't have control, even though I'm the owner (no, 
> we're the owner). 

Does that mean that there's a new IRTC admin? (or is it just 
figure-of-speech? ;)

Regarding the "vote only during deadline" thing:

>     This has more or less been put to me in email too, and all I can say is 
> that Colin is thinking about it. He is aware of this problem, but finds it 
> an 'interesting' problem. His initial response was "Let's run it as it is 
> for 6 months first."  -  "Let's see what happens." I kind of agree with this 
> because for a start, there won't be many animations, and there won't be many 
> stills, (not like the heyday of the IRTC - (I think I've seen 80+ images in 
> one round), but, with the help of you guys, this just might change.

Ah, might as well brace myself for a solid (0/0/0) rating 
this time, then ;)

>      Man, those are good. That's all I can say.    :oO

Nah, it's just throwing more time than i probably should at 
a hobby ... :) though i may later give this one enough 
polish so that i can enter it at our local short film 
festival next year - if i dare. Somehow, no matter what i 
try, it never feels "good enough" to me.

Just wait until you've seen the monk's walk cycle. Ugly :( 
despite that i've just spent three hours placing 500 
keyframes. Guess i'll need clever editing to pick the best 
pieces, keeping fingers crossed that the cloth effect hides 
the knees... and cut it up into short 3-seconds-pieces to 
bring some feeling of speed to the intro sequence.

Well, here goes nothing. I've just started the overnight 
render because i'm under the "running-out-of-time" feeling 
again. Am robably going to throw away the result first thing 
in the morning because i've missed something ...

Man, do i admire Jon VanSickle and his robots with their 
built-in leg logic. These can walk by themselves, if i've 
read the descriptions of previous rounds correctly. That 
sure is handy...

-M

Post a reply to this message

Well, I am looking forward to seeing your animation and Johns.......????? It
inspires me to keep on learning new rendering techniques with pov. I spent
most of Saturday learning Carneholm smoke generator that follows a spline.
By the end of the afternoon I managed to produce a small test.
http://www.eastsoundsuites.com/animations/smoke.mpg

Darin (dbott)

Post a reply to this message

dbott wrote:
> Well, I am looking forward to seeing your animation and Johns.......????? It
> inspires me to keep on learning new rendering techniques with pov. I spent
> most of Saturday learning Carneholm smoke generator that follows a spline.
> By the end of the afternoon I managed to produce a small test.
> http://www.eastsoundsuites.com/animations/smoke.mpg

That's a nice start! You may want to play with the StartTurb 
and TurbIncRate settings of the generator to get a smoke 
that dissolves over time.

Of course, smoke/volume media eats CPU cycles like little 
else... no matter which software. In Cinema, there's the 
"PyroCluster" plugin suite to get those effects, since it 
doesn't know anything like the PovRay media effects AFAIK. 
They start out with a default "trace step" of 1 by default, 
which in my scenes usually means 1 = 1 cm. Hint: slooooow.

For this reason, i've kept well away from these effects...

Since this time i definitely need a menacing mass of fiery 
rolling clouds (if only to hide the fact that my 
demon/dragon model has no feet ;), i've caved in and read 
the manual. After this, i've upped the trace step distance 
to 60 and shrunk the precision to 1%. Result: 1 frame ever 
30 seconds. Happy :)

Oh, and i learned that the plasma noise that creates the 
cloud-like structure has a parameter called "phase" which 
needs to be animated by hand - the default non-animated 
setting makes "copies of a frozen fireball floating up to 
the ceiling while slowly turning black" :)

Well, at least it works now for an animation. A freeze frame 
looks a bit "blotchy" and artefacts-ridden and would need 
much more render time...

-M

Post a reply to this message

"Markus Altendorff" <maa### [at] anthrosphinxde> wrote in message
news:46c8154d@news.povray.org...
> dbott wrote:
> > Well, I am looking forward to seeing your animation and
Johns.......????? It
> > inspires me to keep on learning new rendering techniques with pov. I
spent
> > most of Saturday learning Carneholm smoke generator that follows a
spline.
> > By the end of the afternoon I managed to produce a small test.
> > http://www.eastsoundsuites.com/animations/smoke.mpg
>
> That's a nice start! You may want to play with the StartTurb
> and TurbIncRate settings of the generator to get a smoke
> that dissolves over time.
>
> Of course, smoke/volume media eats CPU cycles like little
> else... no matter which software. In Cinema, there's the
> "PyroCluster" plugin suite to get those effects, since it
> doesn't know anything like the PovRay media effects AFAIK.
> They start out with a default "trace step" of 1 by default,
> which in my scenes usually means 1 = 1 cm. Hint: slooooow.
>
> For this reason, i've kept well away from these effects...
>
> Since this time i definitely need a menacing mass of fiery
> rolling clouds (if only to hide the fact that my
> demon/dragon model has no feet ;), i've caved in and read
> the manual. After this, i've upped the trace step distance
> to 60 and shrunk the precision to 1%. Result: 1 frame ever
> 30 seconds. Happy :)
>
> Oh, and i learned that the plasma noise that creates the
> cloud-like structure has a parameter called "phase" which
> needs to be animated by hand - the default non-animated
> setting makes "copies of a frozen fireball floating up to
> the ceiling while slowly turning black" :)
>
> Well, at least it works now for an animation. A freeze frame
> looks a bit "blotchy" and artefacts-ridden and would need
> much more render time...
>
> -M

Yes, rendering is a very slow process, more so with smoke. It took 25 min to
render my little test.
We will see if I incorporate it into a more complex animation. And, yes I
will start messing around with
wind, turbulence and rotation....I just striped the code down to the minimum
to see how it all works and build
up from there. The Smoke Generator uses Chris Colefax Spline generator inc
file (he is good). One
day I'll get there. ---------You have to keep using it or you lose
it---------
Darin

Post a reply to this message

dbott wrote:

> ---------You have to keep using it or you lose
> it---------


That's so true! And there's always something new to learn on 
top of that, either... Friday i got myself Richard Williams' 
"The Animator's Survival Kit" (paperback, faber & faber, 
London)- that's pretty cool stuff, the scribbles and notes 
of the guy that was responsible for directing the animation 
on "Who framed Roger Rabbitt". While the examples are mostly 
from hand-drawn animations, the ideas on timing and workflow 
apply on 3D as well, of course. Amazing, but something that 
obviously needs endless practice to make it second nature...

Well, looks like as of today, i've got enough render 
snippets to get at least a storyline with a "black robe" in 
it ready, even if i don't manage to complete the whole 
script i intended. :) (of course, re-cutting it would turn 
it into some sort of ordinary fantasy thing, which i 
originally wanted to make fun of ... :S

-M

And, it's time for some more WiPs:

(sorry, i'm just utterly happy with what the new computer 
can do within reasonable time :)

Wizard opening his book:
(note the "edge backlight" effect on the robe, that's the 
Fresnel shader in the luminance channel of the material)
http://wip.anthrosphinx.de/episode010/20070819_163051_snap_59451.jpg

After throwing the contents of the cup towards the portal 
drawn on the floor, the liquid gets caught in its energy field:
(inverse volumetric light coupled with ambient lighting for 
the liquid "glow", liquid made from metaball and particles 
in a set of force fields)
http://wip.anthrosphinx.de/episode010/20070819_171939_snap_62379.jpg

Things start to go wrong for our apprentice - the formula 
said nothing about "fire from the floor"...:
http://wip.anthrosphinx.de/episode010/20070820_002716_snap_1635.jpg

OK, that was definitely NOT what he was trying to conjure:
http://wip.anthrosphinx.de/episode010/20070820_005249_snap_3168.jpg

Post a reply to this message

"Markus Altendorff" <maa### [at] anthrosphinxde> wrote in message
news:46c8da74$1@news.povray.org...
> dbott wrote:
>
> > ---------You have to keep using it or you lose
> > it---------
>
>
> That's so true! And there's always something new to learn on
> top of that, either... Friday i got myself Richard Williams'
> "The Animator's Survival Kit" (paperback, faber & faber,
> London)- that's pretty cool stuff, the scribbles and notes
> of the guy that was responsible for directing the animation
> on "Who framed Roger Rabbitt". While the examples are mostly
> from hand-drawn animations, the ideas on timing and workflow
> apply on 3D as well, of course. Amazing, but something that
> obviously needs endless practice to make it second nature...
>
> Well, looks like as of today, i've got enough render
> snippets to get at least a storyline with a "black robe" in
> it ready, even if i don't manage to complete the whole
> script i intended. :) (of course, re-cutting it would turn
> it into some sort of ordinary fantasy thing, which i
> originally wanted to make fun of ... :S
>
> -M
>
> And, it's time for some more WiPs:
>
> (sorry, i'm just utterly happy with what the new computer
> can do within reasonable time :)
>
> Wizard opening his book:
> (note the "edge backlight" effect on the robe, that's the
> Fresnel shader in the luminance channel of the material)
> http://wip.anthrosphinx.de/episode010/20070819_163051_snap_59451.jpg
>
> After throwing the contents of the cup towards the portal
> drawn on the floor, the liquid gets caught in its energy field:
> (inverse volumetric light coupled with ambient lighting for
> the liquid "glow", liquid made from metaball and particles
> in a set of force fields)
> http://wip.anthrosphinx.de/episode010/20070819_171939_snap_62379.jpg
>
> Things start to go wrong for our apprentice - the formula
> said nothing about "fire from the floor"...:
> http://wip.anthrosphinx.de/episode010/20070820_002716_snap_1635.jpg
>
> OK, that was definitely NOT what he was trying to conjure:
> http://wip.anthrosphinx.de/episode010/20070820_005249_snap_3168.jpg

I'll be watching...........My Black Robe is a little orphan sitting all by
itself. I finished early due to my summer work schedule. And then, ~Steve~
wanted me to submit early for testing.   .jpg's are looking good.
Darin

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