POV-Ray aminations
Presented here are some aminations produced using POV-Ray. Some post-processing may have been done using IrfanView (mainly brightness/contrast modification and sharpening), and the still frames were converted to video using Bink.
Many of these were just tests, done in order to work out how to do things. Some models have been changed since, and some of the scenes have fewer elements than would be the case in a final, fully-realised animation.
Please note that some loss of detail has occured in converting from the original bitmap or Bink files to the AVI files listed here. It was desired to keep the file size of these AVI files not too great...It will be noted that star-field backgrounds particularly suffer at these small images sizes. Also, I have yet to investigate how well various video codecs work with this sort of material.
A swarm of TIE Raptors heads away from an Interdictor-class ship. Chris Colefax's Lens Effects was used for the sun's image and flare. Bitty was used (with a 3-frame average) to provide the motion blur in this sequence (12.9 sec) (1610 kb)
Panning sequence: moon, planet, and Star Destroyer. Chris Coleax's ClockMod used to provide an uneven panning rate- slower at start and end of sequence (10 sec) (677 kb)
A TIE fighter intercepts a fleeing corvette, and is hit by fire from the corvette's top turret. As it spins away, a TIE interceptor passes, and is fired at by, the corvette. A study in animating gunfire and clock-dependent motion control of objects. This sequence was done in two (rather obvious) sections, then combined. Astute viewers will note the incorrect (but I would say visually more appealing) engine glow on the TIE fighter (4.8 sec) (1139 kb)
A TIE droid intercepts and passes the corvette. Again, note the incorrect engine glow. A study in motion control (of the TIE droid), and use of lens flare included files for providing a sun's image (4 sec) (1054 kb)
An X-wing and a B-wing in a mock dog-fight. Motion blur provided by Bitty (4 frames average). Fixed camera look-at position (6.7 sec) (2718kb....large).
Averaging frames can be something of a pitfall, unless the motion of bright objects between frames is carefully judged. In the still frames that form the basis of the above video, the laser bolts are very bright. However, once several frames have been averaged, the intensity of these bolts is greatly reduced by the black background, and the result is less than impressive in the final video. Either the rate-of-motion of such components must be finely tuned, or one does not use frame averaging for motion blur.
Arrival : a probe heads toward a terraformed Mars. View towards Valles Marineris from south of the equator. The original images were very slow to render due to the media code used for the atmospheric haze (5.4 sec) (982kb).