This is an animated version of the still I posted on p.b.i

Basically I've come up with a fairly simplistic way of lighting up the boosters
on this rocket ship according to the acceleration and angular acceleration it's
experiencing. The physics is a bit unrealistic, because it's inverse kinematics
it's quite possible for the ship to move in a direction where it has no boosters
to propel it. Also at present it pays no attention to the size and number of
boosters.

In this test I have a simple spline that I use to set the rotation of the ship
object, then I run a few calculations to approximate the angular acceleration. I
dot product this with the angular thrust vector for each booster (just the cross
product of the booster direction and position relative to the centre of mass).
I'm probably getting way too technical here :) but anyway the result is a value
telling me how much to light up the booster.

The next stage will be to insert this into a full scene, then eventually I'll
have an irtc entry!

Comments, criticisms, and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

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

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Attachments:
Download 'boostertest.m1v.mpg' (246 KB)

Awesome! Even better than the still, which is a rare feat. The thruster
fades look really good. Sounds like you did a good amount of work on the
inverse kinematic thruster logic, and it works well in this short clip.

I notice the white circle-windows have a different finish and seem to light
up a bit more than the surface, which is a nice effect, but they're dark
when not lit.

Do you have an idea of how this vehicle will be used in an IRTC entry? It
would be nice to see it in a three dimensional environment, such as a city
or a huge space station, so we can see it manuever around obstacles and
show interesting lighting effects.

A rather sad thought/idea: the craft approaches and lands in an alien city
with buildings like beautiful flowers, which wither and brown as the
nuclear thrusters brush them. I'm sure that would only take a year or two
to render!

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Looks really good, and would be all the more impressive with thruster sound effects.
The ship
looks to be out of control though :-)

Andy Cocker

"Tek" <tek### [at] evilsuperbraincom> wrote in message news:3e6e6c04@news.povray.org...
> This is an animated version of the still I posted on p.b.i
>
> Basically I've come up with a fairly simplistic way of lighting up the boosters
> on this rocket ship according to the acceleration and angular acceleration it's
> experiencing. The physics is a bit unrealistic, because it's inverse kinematics
> it's quite possible for the ship to move in a direction where it has no boosters
> to propel it. Also at present it pays no attention to the size and number of
> boosters.
>
> In this test I have a simple spline that I use to set the rotation of the ship
> object, then I run a few calculations to approximate the angular acceleration. I
> dot product this with the angular thrust vector for each booster (just the cross
> product of the booster direction and position relative to the centre of mass).
> I'm probably getting way too technical here :) but anyway the result is a value
> telling me how much to light up the booster.
>
> The next stage will be to insert this into a full scene, then eventually I'll
> have an irtc entry!
>
> Comments, criticisms, and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
>
> --
> Tek
> http://www.evilsuperbrain.com
>
>
>
>


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"Renderdog" <slo### [at] hiwaaynet> wrote:
> Awesome! Even better than the still, which is a rare feat. The thruster
> fades look really good. Sounds like you did a good amount of work on the
> inverse kinematic thruster logic, and it works well in this short clip.

Thank you :)

> I notice the white circle-windows have a different finish and seem to
light
> up a bit more than the surface, which is a nice effect, but they're dark
> when not lit.

Well, they actually don't have a different finish :) They're going to need
one if they're ever to look right, so I'll add it soon.

> Do you have an idea of how this vehicle will be used in an IRTC entry? It
> would be nice to see it in a three dimensional environment, such as a city
> or a huge space station, so we can see it manuever around obstacles and
> show interesting lighting effects.

Check out my earlier post to this group. Subject: "Teleportation, IRTC wip".
I also have an animation of that early version of the ship dodging an
asteroid, but you'll have to wait until the final irtc entry to see that :)

> A rather sad thought/idea: the craft approaches and lands in an alien city
> with buildings like beautiful flowers, which wither and brown as the
> nuclear thrusters brush them. I'm sure that would only take a year or two
> to render!

Well the thrusters aren't the focus of the animation, they're a subtlety.
The main subject is the ship's other engine, a teleportation drive that
repeatedly jumps the craft to random points in the universe, until it gets
near enough to it's intended destination to switch to it's thrusters.

Thanks for the comments! :)
--
Tek
http://www.evilsuperbrain.com

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"Andrew Cocker" <mai### [at] andrewcockercouk> wrote in message
news:3e6f4a22$1@news.povray.org...
> Looks really good, and would be all the more impressive with thruster
sound effects.

That would be good. Any idea how I can play a sound effect in response to
something happening in povray?

For that matter, has anyone got any tips on how to add general sound effects
to an animation?

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

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Tek wrote:
> This is an animated version of the still I posted on p.b.i

Looks great, now you just need some swirling stars in the BG and it will be
spot on, oh and blue lasers beams (vintage sci-fi style).... zap zap zap !
--
Rick

Kitty5 NewMedia http://Kitty5.co.uk
POV-Ray News & Resources http://Povray.co.uk
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Tek wrote:
>This is an animated version of the still I posted on p.b.i
>
>Basically I've come up with a fairly simplistic way of lighting up the boosters
>on this rocket ship according to the acceleration and angular acceleration it's
>experiencing. The physics is a bit unrealistic, because it's inverse kinematics
>it's quite possible for the ship to move in a direction where it has no boosters
>to propel it. Also at present it pays no attention to the size and number of
>boosters.
>
>In this test I have a simple spline that I use to set the rotation of the ship
>object, then I run a few calculations to approximate the angular acceleration. I
>dot product this with the angular thrust vector for each booster (just the cross
>product of the booster direction and position relative to the centre of mass).
>I'm probably getting way too technical here :) but anyway the result is a value
>telling me how much to light up the booster.
>
>The next stage will be to insert this into a full scene, then eventually I'll
>have an irtc entry!
>
>Comments, criticisms, and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
>
>--
>Tek
>http://www.evilsuperbrain.com
>

The animation looks very good, and I like the way your media looks.  There
is one issue I can see though.  The thrusters fire in response to the
spline.  This makes it seem that they are firing in response to the change
in direction, not causing it.  It is fairly simple to fix though, just pass
the thrusters spline values shifted toward one.
i.e.

thrust_time = my_spline[clock]+.1

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Tek wrote:

>Check out my earlier post to this group. Subject: "Teleportation, IRTC wip".
>I also have an animation of that early version of the ship dodging an
>asteroid, but you'll have to wait until the final irtc entry to see that :)

The teleportation idea sounds great. Unfortunately I can't see DivX videos
(I'm on a Mac). I'm looking forward to seeing the IRTC entry.

Post a reply to this message

> Well the thrusters aren't the focus of the animation, they're a subtlety.
> The main subject is the ship's other engine, a teleportation drive that
> repeatedly jumps the craft to random points in the universe, until it gets
> near enough to it's intended destination to switch to it's thrusters.

Teleportation through worm holes generated by the ship?
I hope its not completely random and the "universe" is pretty well mapped or
you might run into something completely unexpected...  :)





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> That would be good. Any idea how I can play a sound effect in response to
> something happening in povray?
>
> For that matter, has anyone got any tips on how to add general sound
effects
> to an animation?

Foley artist?  :)

Unless you know the timing of each even and can program that into your video
editing software?

Shouldn't be too hard to list what event happens at what frame/s and insert
the sound at that frame/s.


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"Kitsune_e" <kit### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> The animation looks very good, and I like the way your media looks.  There
> is one issue I can see though.  The thrusters fire in response to the
> spline.  This makes it seem that they are firing in response to the change
> in direction, not causing it.  It is fairly simple to fix though, just
pass
> the thrusters spline values shifted toward one.
> i.e.
>
> thrust_time = my_spline[clock]+.1

Well actually they fire according to the acceleration at a given point in
time, which is correct. There's no lag between the ship moving and the
thrusters firing, and there shouldn't be because as soon as a thruster fires
it imparts acceleration to the ship.

Though I may add a short warm up period before they fire, so it seems less
like they can just switch on and off instantly.

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

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"Aaron" <aar### [at] ihugconz> wrote:
> Teleportation through worm holes generated by the ship?
> I hope its not completely random and the "universe" is pretty well mapped
or
> you might run into something completely unexpected...  :)


Well I'm going to have one of those lovely sci-fi justifications for using
artistic license. In this case I'll say it teleports you to locations with
similar gravity, or something, so you never end up in deep space or inside a
star! Of course that's just an excuse for me to teleport it ot lots of
interesting locations :)

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

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"Aaron" <aar### [at] ihugconz> wrote in message:
> Shouldn't be too hard to list what event happens at what frame/s and
insert
> the sound at that frame/s.

Yeah, I was thinking of resorting to just noting down all the timings then
sequencing the sounds in a music program to produce a file I could attach to
the video. But I was kind of hoping there was an easier way...

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

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Hmm I never do POV anims.  But surely an output to a text file could be
through the script?

> Yeah, I was thinking of resorting to just noting down all the timings then
> sequencing the sounds in a music program to produce a file I could attach
to
> the video. But I was kind of hoping there was an easier way...



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"Tek" <tek### [at] evilsuperbraincom> wrote in news:3e6f5ecc$1@news.povray.org:

> For that matter, has anyone got any tips on how to add general sound
> effects to an animation?
> 

I use http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ to create soundtracks. It is a very 
nice cross platform, open source, multi track, sound/music editor.  Then I 
just point my encoder http://www.tmpgenc.net/ to the wave file and the 
series of PNG files created by POV-Ray.


Tom

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"Aaron" <aar### [at] ihugconz> wrote in message
news:3e705bfc@news.povray.org...
> Hmm I never do POV anims.  But surely an output to a text file could be
> through the script?

Hmm... that's a good idea.
In fact it should be possible to use such a file to produce the sound track,
though that would need some programming and I don't have time for it before
the deadline. But in any case I can get pov to output a file that I can then
work from by hand.

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

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"Tom Galvin" <tom### [at] imporg> wrote:
> I use http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ to create soundtracks. It is a very
> nice cross platform, open source, multi track, sound/music editor.  Then I
> just point my encoder http://www.tmpgenc.net/ to the wave file and the
> series of PNG files created by POV-Ray.

That looks really useful, thanks!
I'll download it tonight :)

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

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I love the hull detail.

The boosters look nice, although I'm not quite 'sure' that the ship motion
is proper given the booster firing, but I think that's because the motion is
so complicated.  If I watch one booster (i.e. the front) it looks perfect.
I take it from your description it's correct.

Some of the boosters seem to 'overlap' (the side / wing boosters) some which
would impact a net upward motion, and the tail booster is going too, but I
assume the camera is locked on the center of the ship.  Maybe if there were
starts / something to gauge movement against it would be more obvious.

Anyway, nits, again I just love the hull detail.  They seem to be different
plates.  How did you do it?

     == John ==


"Tek" <tek### [at] evilsuperbraincom> wrote in message
news:3e6e6c04@news.povray.org...
> This is an animated version of the still I posted on p.b.i

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The ship motion is right apart from the amount of thrust and the size of the
boosters. i.e. boosters light up according to their position and direction
only. The way I see it that's accurate enough to fool most people.

The camera isn't moving, the ship is rotating on the spot in zero-G. It's a
very unusual movement so that's why it's so hard to figure out what's
happening! :) The ship should gain a net motion when the rear boosters fire
because of how much bigger they are, but like I said above I don't model
that.

The plates that make the hull use a normal map, like the one I used on my
winter entry to the irtc. I've improved it a little since then, but for this
animation I actually don't use a normal map. That sounds like a
contradiction, but bear with me: I render the ships texture to a seperate
image, with all the panel bumps, dirt, colour, logos, and windows on it. So
when you map that texture on it looks lumpy, even though it's flat and
doesn't have a normal map! This makes it render much faster than a normal
map, which is in turn much faster than actually modelling the panels.

But in answer to your question: the panels are based loosely on a normal map
that's kind of like this: normal { cells }. I've modified and scaled it, but
that's the basic effect.

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


"John D. Gwinner" <joh### [at] cornelledu> wrote in message
news:3e7e2b95$1@news.povray.org...
> I love the hull detail.
>
> The boosters look nice, although I'm not quite 'sure' that the ship motion
> is proper given the booster firing, but I think that's because the motion
is
> so complicated.  If I watch one booster (i.e. the front) it looks perfect.
> I take it from your description it's correct.
>
> Some of the boosters seem to 'overlap' (the side / wing boosters) some
which
> would impact a net upward motion, and the tail booster is going too, but I
> assume the camera is locked on the center of the ship.  Maybe if there
were
> starts / something to gauge movement against it would be more obvious.
>
> Anyway, nits, again I just love the hull detail.  They seem to be
different
> plates.  How did you do it?
>
>      == John ==
>
>
> "Tek" <tek### [at] evilsuperbraincom> wrote in message
> news:3e6e6c04@news.povray.org...
> > This is an animated version of the still I posted on p.b.i
>
>

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