TITLE: GPC (gpc_lb.mpg) (Galactic Pest Control)
NAME: Lou Bruce
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: lou_bruce@yahoo.com
WEBPAGE: N/A
TOPIC: Explosion
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: gpc_lb.mpg
ZIPFILE: gpc_lb.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    Blender 2.37a


TOOLS USED: 
    Blender 2.37a for modeling and animation.
         Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for the Poster
         Audacity for compositing the soundtrack.
          TMPEGnc for adding sound and converting to Mpeg
          Magpie for synchronizing the video events with the audio.


CREATION TIME: 
    24 days


HARDWARE USED: 
    AMD Athlon XP2500, 512MB ram


ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 

     This is an imaginary advertisement for a company that destroys planets.


VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 
    Windows Media Player or Totem


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 

     I was inspired by the movie trailer for "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy".
So I started building a scene that would imitate the film trailer as close as my
knowledge and skill would allow. As it progressed I decided to use Gustav
Holst's compositon "Mars: The bringer of War" as recorded by the Georgian
Festival Orchestra, Jahni Mardjani Conducting; as my soundtrack. That mixed
with various explosion and sound effects that I've collected from the web
became the final soundtrack.
     I need to give credit to several blender users for tutorials, inspiration,
objects and textures.

The referenced images, blend files, and animations can be found on:

 http://centralsource.com/blender/explosions/

Thanks so much to the following for sharing there hardwork with fellow blender
artists.

     M@dcow  
     @ce 
     Macke

Technically the geometry is mostly simple spheres and planes.
The planet texture is a jpeg of Mars.
The background is a jpg.
The various explosions are mostly halo materials with varying halo size color
and texture.
The first shockwave is my own creation a spin extruded wavy profile with a
modified shockwave texture built on Macke's texture.
The animated text are meshes that were converted from text objects and animated
with relative vertex keys.
I was disappointed in the debris. I used the particle system with dupliverts to
make instance copies of a master rock. I wasn't able to figure out how to get
the speed and control that I wanted. I also couldn't find a combination of
materials/textures that I liked. Overall I'm pretty well pleased with the end
result, if only I had another month to experiment. 





