I decided to take some time away from other more elaborate POV-Ray pursuits (and
real-life) to make a fun little animation. Nothing fancy...basically just a more
complex version of 'sphere over checkered plane,' with candy colors (no real
textures to speak of.) Plus motion-blur and a shaking camera--both of which
hide a lot of sins! Here are two versions of a typical frame--one is static, to
show what the scene actually looks like, and how relatively crude it is. I
posted the animation over at p.b.a.

This little scene did give me a chance to work on arching electrical bolts; and
I finally came up with a way to animate intermittent/changing 'events' like
this across blurred frames (15 static images per final frame, BTW) so that the
'static' bolts show up across all 15. (Otherwise, a different bolt in *each* of
the 15 frames ends up looking like blurred mush, without much brightness.)

The mountains are a procedural height_field--actually a static one, with the
apparent movement accomplished by animating its granite pattern instead. (I.e.,
the HF triangles remain in place, and the pattern function moves through them.)
To get this to work well visually, a rather high triangle resolution was
required for the HF. So neither the camera nor the main sphere actually moves
much at all.

I didn't use any AA for the animation; a nice side-effect of blurring and camera
shake is that the lack of AA isn't really apparent.

Sometime soon, I'll post my versions of blurring and camera-shake code--after I
finish my other project, the 'stand-in human.'

KW

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Preview of image 'alien_seed_sphere.jpg'

Nice light!
;-)
Paolo

 >Kenneth  on date 04/05/2009 07:53 wrote:
> I decided to take some time away from other more elaborate POV-Ray pursuits (and
> real-life) to make a fun little animation. Nothing fancy...basically just a more
> complex version of 'sphere over checkered plane,' with candy colors (no real
> textures to speak of.) Plus motion-blur and a shaking camera--both of which
> hide a lot of sins! Here are two versions of a typical frame--one is static, to
> show what the scene actually looks like, and how relatively crude it is. I
> posted the animation over at p.b.a.
> 
> This little scene did give me a chance to work on arching electrical bolts; and
> I finally came up with a way to animate intermittent/changing 'events' like
> this across blurred frames (15 static images per final frame, BTW) so that the
> 'static' bolts show up across all 15. (Otherwise, a different bolt in *each* of
> the 15 frames ends up looking like blurred mush, without much brightness.)
> 
> The mountains are a procedural height_field--actually a static one, with the
> apparent movement accomplished by animating its granite pattern instead. (I.e.,
> the HF triangles remain in place, and the pattern function moves through them.)
> To get this to work well visually, a rather high triangle resolution was
> required for the HF. So neither the camera nor the main sphere actually moves
> much at all.
> 
> I didn't use any AA for the animation; a nice side-effect of blurring and camera
> shake is that the lack of AA isn't really apparent.
> 
> Sometime soon, I'll post my versions of blurring and camera-shake code--after I
> finish my other project, the 'stand-in human.'
> 
> KW
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>

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Paolo Gibellini <p.g### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Nice light!
> ;-)
> Paolo

Thanks. I do prefer rather 'unnatural' lighting in my scenes--more 'theatrical'
and colorful, with lots of shadows.

The sphere and its rotating lights were inspired by some imagery I saw years
ago, in an old Russian science-fiction film which I don't know the name of. It
had a spherical spacecraft hovering over a landscape, with a rotating 'band'
enclosing it. Very creepy! I wish I could find a DVD of that film...

Ken W.

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