Just playing evil mad scientist with my planet.

-Mike

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Attachments:
Download 'earth3.mpg' (374 KB)

Yeah!  Really great!  It's as though a massive solar flare had erupted and then
slammed into the Earth like a super intense aurora.  Well, my interpretation
anyway.

Bob

"Mike" <pov### [at] aolcom> wrote in message news:38950BBC.B8648444@aol.com...
| Just playing evil mad scientist with my planet.
|
| -Mike
|

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Mike wrote:

>Just playing evil mad scientist with my planet.

Cool. The clouds seem to survive.
Ingo

-- 
Photography: http://members.home.nl/ingoogni/
Pov-Ray    : http://members.home.nl/seed7/

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Mike wrote:

> Just playing evil mad scientist with my planet.

    The movie isn't showing yet.

--
The question is not, "Who will let me do it?"
The question is, "Who will stop me?"

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Amazing!

First of all it looks really good (although not very comforting - little
time to run).

I recently read a SF novel (by Larry Niven I believe) which describes
exactly this type of thing, only then it's not Earth that burns up but
Pluto. It was fun to read because written somewhere in the sixties and
it describes how a spacevessel tries to land on Pluto unaware of the
fact that the surface consists of frozen oxygen and hydrogen (or
something like that). In the description is something about a ring of
fire spreading over the planet and folding around it. 
Somehow that appealed to me and so does this animation. Did you already
post the source or if you won't will you be rendering a larger (screen &
time) version?

Remco

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I should release the source eventually.  This image is a test, and I plan on
doing quite a bit more with it to make it longer, more dramatic, and the
explosion more detailed.

The trick is to create a sphere surrounding the planet and use a spherical
density_map (or pigment_map to be faster), which is filled with other
densities (or pigments) so that the outside of the sphere is transparent,
then a small area of fire effect, then finally the black area (which is a
crackle pattern with red trim).  The pigment is then scaled twice as large
as the sphere it's in, and translated so it's just outside the container.
It then is translated to intersect the visible portion of the sphere as the
animation runs.  The 'layers' of the spherical pattern intersect the sphere
and create the patterns on the surface.

This animation is a test done with an emission media, but I now have a
version using pigment because it's faster.  This version also has the
crackle pattern a little messed up because it was done with official POV.  I
figured out that I could have the patterns within the pigment_map stay the
way they were originally writeen by using the reset_children warp in
MegaPOV.

I never read that story by Larry Niven but it sounds like a good one.  The
concept began with a little story idea that I had which is now being ironed
out as the plot of a small group animation project with some people on AOL.
I know Bob is in and probably a few others that hang around here.  It calls
for the destruction of earth, which was supposed to come about through
nuclear was.  I just thought that something like that wouldn't really wipe
everything out completely, so a new weapon would have to exist.  The
appearence is based on the asteroid collision at the beginning of the movie
armegeddon.  What creates it is a little idea that I got from Enders game-
that is, a single bomb that can destroy everything on the surface of a
planet.  I once read a story about the manhatten project and supposedly some
of the scientists feared that the chain reaction might not stop and it would
burn up the whole planet.

-Mike

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Mike wrote:
> 
> planet.  I once read a story about the manhatten project and
> supposedly some
> of the scientists feared that the chain reaction might not stop and it
> would
> burn up the whole planet.
> 
> -Mike

I guess that's what was in that book.
The nice thing about it is that it is full of assumptions and
predictions that may seem a bit ridiculous now, but were very serious at
the time and on the other hand there are a number of ideas in it that
still sound interesting. It breathes 2001 A Space Odyssee. 

As for the animation, it think it could make a very nice logo-animation
(or whatever it's called) as well.

I like the idea you described about the project you're working on. If
there's more to tell please let us know.

Remco

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In article <389611F2.161B9993@aol.com>, Mike <pov### [at] aolcom> wrote:

> What creates it is a little idea that I got from Enders game-
> that is, a single bomb that can destroy everything on the surface of a
> planet. 

(Note: May contain spoilers for people who plan to or are reading 
Ender's Game)
I read that book recently(and am now reading it's sequel, Speaker for 
the Dead). As I recall, their weapon temporarily removed some of the 
forces holding molecules together within a certain area, it was beam 
based and had to be focused. Because objects within it's effect were no 
longer held together, they expanded into a cloud of dust(which could 
then come back together under gravitational pull if there is enough of 
it). The disintegration also produced more of the field, so if ships 
were close enough together and one of them was hit, the others would go 
too.

So the bugger homeworld wasn't consumed by a firey explosion, it just 
ballooned into a cloud of dust. Just try to do that in POV. :-)
(An idea: Difference another sphere from the planet sphere to simulate 
the effect of the disintegration, and have media-containing spheres 
flying outward from the area as though it is dissolving.)

Still, it is a very good animation, the first thing I thought was 
"global warming". :-)
It kind of reminded me of the effects of the Genesis device from Star 
Trek, except kind of in reverse.(they showed a rocky, lifeless planet 
with a very similar wave of fire spreading from the impact point, and 
leaving behind greenery and oceans.)

-- 
Chris Huff
e-mail: chr### [at] yahoocom
Web page: http://chrishuff.dhs.org/

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Chris Huff wrote:
> 
> It kind of reminded me of the effects of the Genesis device from Star
> Trek, except kind of in reverse.(they showed a rocky, lifeless planet
> with a very similar wave of fire spreading from the impact point, and
> leaving behind greenery and oceans.)
> 

Yes! Now you mention it, that was the image I had in mind when reading
the book, I just didn't realize it.

I must say, that Mike's version, although small is very convincing as
well (maybe more).

> --
> Chris Huff

Regards,

Remco

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cool, how 'exactly' did you do this?

Rick

"Mike" <pov### [at] aolcom> wrote in message news:38950BBC.B8648444@aol.com...
> Just playing evil mad scientist with my planet.
>
> -Mike
>

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