TITLE: The end of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse
NAME: Mike McBain
COUNTRY: United States of America
EMAIL: zorque@davlin.net
WEBPAGE: www.davlin.net/users/zorque
TOPIC: "The End of..."
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: lightmcb.mpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Hash's Animation Master, v10.5o

TOOLS USED: 
    avi2mpg1 (mpeg converter), adobe AE (frames to avi)

CREATION TIME: 
    about a month

HARDWARE USED: 
    PC - AMD 2000+ (1.7GHz), 1GIG PC133 RAM
VIEWING RECOMMENDATION: some systems show video dark, requiring raising your
gamma / brightness.


ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 
    In 1999, the Cape Hatteras lighthouse had to be moved to
escape a dangerously close erosion of the shoreline. This animation tries to
show what would have happened if it hadn't been saved.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 
    Originally this animation was
supposed to be much more detailed, including rain, splashing, and individual
blades of grass. Unfortunately, two circumstances ruined this: 1)the added
particles for rain, splash, and grass, slowed the renderer down to the point
where I would never be able to finish rendering before the deadline. 2) the
mpeg encoder I used had such poor image quality once I got my size down that
the rain and grass look ugly anyways. So just pretend it's raining and there's
grass, k?
The only real trick here is that there's a few different versions of the
lighthouse. Seperate models for the exterior shots, interior shots, and the
breakaway model. The mudslide was done with a pose slider (morph target,
whatever). Entering the contest a month before the deadline really forced me to
cut corners, but it was an excellent learning experience. I think I'll take the
full 3 months next time :)

