TITLE: Nova
NAME: David LeMasters
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: dlemasters2@comcast.net
TOPIC: Explosion
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: dlnova.mpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.6 Windows/Linux

TOOLS USED: 
    VideoMach, Windows Paint

CREATION TIME: 
    ~4 hrs running concurrently on 3 machines

HARDWARE USED: 
    AMD 3200+ Windows XP Home, 2.4G P4 Mandrake Linux 9.2, AMD 1G
Windows XP Home

ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 

A star is dying.  Though the chances of success are small, a desperate
civilization is willing to try anything to revitalize their sun.  Giant Solar
Laser Stabilizers are built, moved into position, and fired.  It appears to be
working, the sun brightens.  A moment later the unimaginable happens.  The
expanding gas shell thrown off by the sun disintegrates all objects in its
path.  As the gas expands it cools, changing color from white to yellow to
orange to red, finally it becomes invisible as it cools into the infrared.  All
that remains is a small solitary white dwarf.    

VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 

Windows Media Player 10, Movie Player for Linux

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 

The sun is a sphere with a bozo pattern with a slightly larger sphere also a
bozo pattern but with a color map that varies as a function of time.  The
planets are also spheres with a bozo pattern.  The planets disintegrate using
the same method as the nova shell, just quicker and smaller. The ship is just
plain csg.  When the ship is consumed by the nova the texture of each component
is changed to a bozo pattern in the same manner as the nova shell.  The rocket
exhaust is formed with a density function.  The star field is just many small
white spheres with a high ambient value randomly scattered around.  After
rendering, VideoMach was used to create the final mpg.  Windows Paint was used
to convert one of the stills to jpg format for the poster.  

