Hello all. My name is Jeff Smith and I am a researcher in graphics and
rendering technologies. I am in the middle of developing a ray-tracing
technique that promises to have a high 'cool factor'. I can't say too much
about what I'm doing until I'm ready to publish, but I *CAN* say that this
project has SIGGRAPH written all over it.

As many of you may be aware, publishing a paper at SIGGRAPH is a lot more
than just doing cool research and writing a paper. To be taken seriously,
you have to have a pretty slick video demonstration to go with all your
hard work. The problem I have is that I'm pretty much pedal-to-the-metal on
the research and rendering code between now and the end of the year. And
that leaves me no time to learn how to USE povray, then model, light and
animate a scene.

What I'd like to do is solicit the assistance of somebody from the povray
community who already knows the tricks and traps. I've already sketched out
the details of the demo sequence, but I need to bring in a collaborator to
build the povray scene for me.

What I'm offering in return is the bragging rights to being the first artist
to work with my new technique, as well as on-screen credit (naturally) in
the finished video which will (hopefully) be shown at SIGGRAPH in 2006.
You'll also get credit as the artist in any academic papers that use scenes
from the video as illustration.

The scene I have in mind is not horribly complex. It's a fairly static
outdoor scene with a few simple adobe buildings, some hills, a bridge, a
tree, a few shrubs and one human figure. There will be some minor animation
(flowers waving in the wind, the human figure will scratch his head) but
aside from secondary motion like that, no complex dynamics or motion.

The entire video will run for about 2 minutes and consist of a camera
flythrough of the scene, punctuated by pauses to observe particular details
from time to time. (As the research progresses, there may be some
additional changes required to highlight particular aspects of my
technique, but I don't anticipate any major changes once we have the basic
scene done.)

My goal is to have a static version of the scene modeled by the end of July
and have lighting, textures and animations done by the end of September.
(Sooner is fine, if that suits you better, but I don't NEED it sooner.)

If you're interested in hearing more, please send me a note at
jeffspam a_t smithicus d0t com and include a URL where I can see some of
your previous work. (Feel free to remove the word 'spam' from that address.
:-)

You can see more about me and my research at http://jefficus.usask.ca

Thanks,
Jefficus

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