sorry for making long replys, but it's just that i planned to do something
similar, but never got the time to do it, and i just felt like sharing.

"Divine Wind" <div### [at] blueyondercouk> wrote:
> The Cunning Plan was to write pov code but what is and where can I get Blend
> from.
i used www.blender.org a long time ago (long before i started to use povray)
it's open source now (thanks to many peaple donating to open it up).
i think blender is more oriented at animations, however the same thing can
be done in povray. if i would start on something like this, i would choose
povray.

> Live actors is not what I intended but to use pov generated char's.
note that real-looking animated characters are very hard to do. in any case
you probably will have to model the "skin surface" in other 3D software,
but most software can export to povray code in some way.

> I have 3 networked computers and I intended to use them. I genrally leave my
> computers on 24/7 so I could utlise the idle time.
what will take most of the time is rendering tests. there are many things
you can do to render tests as fast as possible. like:
-use very simple lighting (only one point light)
-lower resolution
-fewer frames (render only every 4th frame)
-use simple textures
-disable objects you are not interested in at the time.
-use simpler versions of objects
all of this can be automated using pov-ray code, so you can very fast
enable/disable options to test what you want to see, but nothing more.
of source you want to render a few frames at a time to check that things
look
right when everything is enabled.
if you have completed the code for your film, it should be possible to find
volunteers to help rendering the final frames. (i can run povray on about
10 3Ghz/1GB pc's during weekends)

> While this project may take years, it's no diffrent from writting good
> software (POV is a great example)so thats ok as this is what Im used to.
years is realistic. (if you would have said "i need it done next wensday",
then there would be a problem :-)

if i understand it correctly, you will do this on your own (with a little
help form others) so your biggest problem will be that you don't have a lot
of time
making many objects, so you will have to look at using a lot of existing
3D objects and convert them to pov-ray, as well as finding ways to re-use
and objects and generate objects using very little code. (like the povray
tree macro's) The povray language is very powerfull, almost anything can be
done,
including reading and writing files before and after rendering a frame.

warning:
i don't think anyone has come close to making anything coming close to a
"film" using pov-ray. there is no reason why it would not be possible, just
a lot of work. have you looked at the IRTC animations ? (i liked "Star
Jump" 2003)

i started using the lightsys lighting system. it helps getting real-looking
colors, using the spectral curves of all lights and surfaces.
http://www.ignorancia.org/lightsys.php

there are some animation examples bundled with povray. also some of the
IRTC animations come with source code.

also
can convert a list of images to a slight show, that can be set to 50 images
per second, very easy when testing things.
There are one or more(?) povray include files (or macros) to help making
animations, but i never used them. everything in povray animations is based
on the "clock" variable. default it runs from 0.0 to 1.0, but for a 13
seconds "shot" i set it to run from 0.0 to 13.0

i don't know how much you looked into pov-ray animations, but it basically
works like this: the position (or rotation) of moving objects are described
using
the clock variable, like: objects { ... translate <0,0,clock*100> } same for
the camera position, or the point the camera is looking at. for smooth
object and camera moves the usual trick is to define a smooth spline, and
define it to be
13 "long", then you can use the clock variable to specify where an object or
the camera is on the spline.

if you have any questions about povray or povray animations please ask here.
(or mail me at jwstolk=at=gmail=dot=com)

anyone else doing something similar ?

Jaap.

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