Notes about the MPEGS on this Companion CD by the Animator: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The animations are encoded in the MPEG1 format for the widest cross platform compatibility. All the animations are 1/4 screen NTSC video resolution (320 x 240) with a FPS rate of 29.97, and look best if played at a 1:1 ratio on your computer. If you are using the Windows (95/NT) OS, use ActiveMovie to play them. Select Properties to set the playback behavior to repeat for animations that cycle. Mac OS users can use Quick Time 2.5 or higher to play back the video clips on their systems. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to contact me. e-mail: csricard@city-net.com web page: http://www.city-net.com/~csricard ----------------------------------------------------------------------- A brief description of each of the animations follows below: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BunnyWalk.mpg & BunnyJump.mpg Meet Roger Rabid. A seamless and rather toony looking metaNURBed character I created by welding spheres together and modifying them. He has 72 bones in his body and forward kinematics were used to do both the Walk Cycle and Jump animations. I think Lightwave's cartoon shader lends an attractive look to the character. Please take a moment to look at the included image file: Bunnyref.gif, to see how the model is constructed and view its details. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CoalCentrifuge.mpg & ThermalDryer.mpg One of the largest coal producers on the east coast wanted a video for their visitor's center that explained the many steps that were required to process the coal that becomes the electricity you use in your daily life. These two sample animations show how a lot of technical data was handled and presented in a visually interesting fashion for the viewer. The coal centrifuge separates water from the coal like a washing machine, and the Thermal Dryer demonstrates how different sized fractions of coal are dried and processed before they are shipped. All the diagrammatic 3D models were patterned after their custom 2D artwork, so that the video would better relate to their exhibit space. Booleans were used extensively to solid model most of the machinery. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Probe.mpg This animation was originally created as a prototype for the Franklin Science Museum's "Journey Into a Volcano" exhibit, which was to be part of a joint NOAA/Franklin traveling weather exhibit. The production ended up being done in-house by the Franklin and my probe model later became part of the NOAA's "Swirls and Curls" exhibit. That exhibit showcased different types of satellite data and plate tectonics. It was rear projected in a specially designed case that used a 3.5 foot plastic dome as a screen. The prototype mpeg version presented here has some fun camera work in it, but does not have the LCD looking overlay that the full screen video version has. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- RoboEscape.mpg I live four blocks from the National Robotics Electronics Consortium (a joint venture between the DOD and CMU), and have often imagined what kinds of strange autonomous machines lurk behind it walls when I take my dog for walks along the river there. I took a number of 35 mm photos and used two pictures to create the "final" one in Photoshop (the security fence got in the way, and I had to remove it). The buildings were roughed out in Lightwave and then front projection mapped. I recreated the lighting (shadow mapped lights) and camera angles and modeled a quick robot to romp in the scene. No grain or other special plugins were used. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Mermaid.mpg & MerAudio.mpg This model was created point-by-point and metaNURBed in Lightwave 5.5. The facial animation was done using Morph Gizmo, and the body has 74 bones in it. Lock and Key was used to keep the eyes parented to the head. I purchased Computational Graphics "Starfire 2.0" procedural textures collection to handle the task of creating the scales, since Lightwave presently doesn't have native UVW mapping. The other three mermaids in the background were animated with the Math Motion plugin, using this formula to simulate a believable dolphin kick: sin(z-5*t)*((z+.01)/3)/2. I used a reference null to drag a displacement map to create the waves on the surface of the water, so I could control the speed more interactively. After doing this piece, I realized just how slow my present computer is. An NTSC version (520 frames) takes about a week to render on my AMD K6 PR-200. Please take a moment to look at the included image file: Mermaidref.gif, to see how the model is constructed and view its details. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 1932Zippo.mpg & ModernZippo.mpg The modern Zippo chrome lighter is a scale model built to impress upon the company I freelance for (The Magic Lantern) could re-create and animate their products in a realistic, and tasteful manner. The original 1932 lighter was reconstructed based on copies of patent documents and frame grabs of real ones in their private collection. The great thing about modeling to scale, is that both models fit almost perfectly into the same base animation that were modified for both the Zippo intro movie "American Icons" and their repair clinic video, "The Cent Never Spent." The 1932 animation demonstrates the "windproof" quality of each and every Zippo, and uses three bones to manipulate the flame. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- All Mpeg Animations copyright 1998 Craig S. Ricard, aka Rowsby. Usage permitted for personal viewing only. Special permission granted for Keyframe Magazine's Companion CD.