No national affiliation intended! Substitute the flag image of your choice. ;-)

A frame from my very first POV-Ray animation, and incorporationg motion-blur.
The animation is posted over at p.b.a. Each blurred frame is gotten by simply
averaging 10 pre-rendered POV images together (also done in POV.)

The flag is a procedural HF, using animated bozo patterns. I've already posted
the flag code itself (in response to a question from another newsgroup user);
it's here, at message #7...

http://news.povray.org/povray.newusers/thread/%3Cweb.498de26469c1735e7c859cee0%40news.povray.org%3E/?mtop=5

Regarding motion-blur: I'm still toying with how *much* blur there should be,
trying to take into account a number of complex factors and how they affect the
visual appearance of filmed motion:
A) CGI animation viewed on a computer screen at 60 or more progressive fields
per second
B) the 'persistence of vision' phenomenon
C) a real motion-picture camera's 'half-open 180-deg. shutter' which misses half
the real action
D) how that revolving shutter interacts with really fast motion
E) the effect of the "2:3 pulldown" when a 24 fps movie is transferred to video.

Although I've already worked out various SDL code schemes to vary the amount of
blur (and to  mimic a real camera's 180-deg. shutter with the 'missing action
gaps'), the real problem boils down to what *looks* right. Since I can only
view my animation on my computer screen (I haven't made a DVD of it yet, for TV
viewing), it's difficult to tell how much blur looks 'natural' (given the
'unnatural' nature of 24 fps movies themselves, but which I'm *hoping* to
mimic.) Surprisingly, I haven't found a definitive web site that discusses
these factors re: CGI blur, or how companies like ILM and PIXAR have arrived at
the 'correct' amount of blur in their films. If anyone can point me to a good
site, I would certainly appreciate it.

BTW, my simple flag animation doesn't take any of this stuff into account; it's
'fully blurred' (meaning, each and every 10-frame batch of pre-rendered images
is blurred together to get a composite frame.) A strictly 'linear' approach,
reproducing *all* the flag motion; but I think it looks a bit too blurry.

Ken W.

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