Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!caen!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!usenet From: tmkk@uiuc.edu (K. Khan) Newsgroups: comp.graphics Subject: (Raytraced?) Animations Message-ID: <1991Jun25.134644.13495@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Date: 25 Jun 91 13:46:44 GMT Sender: usenet@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News) Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana Lines: 32 #include I was recently shown some wonderfully done .FLI (Autodesk Animator FLIck) animations which used 3D raytracing techniques to produce, among other things, a set of three turning mirrored gears, a couple of bouncing spheres, etc. I'd like to put together some similar kinds of 3D animations. I already have QRT, and it works (albeit a bit slowly on my '386/20 with no math coprocessor - time for another hardware upgrade, neh? ;-) but it only generates one scene at a time. In order to do what I want, I would have to run QRT, manually edit the description file to move the eyepoint and/or objects slightly, re-run QRT, re-edit the description file, etc. etc. etc. Is there some package which will allow me to do such things automatically? For example, I could specify a bunch of objects, and then specify a path via which the eyepoint would travel through the scene, along with a suitable lookat vector for each point along the path. The program would then generate a series of individual scenes, each from a different eyepoint along the path I specified. I could then use Animator to import each scene as a separate frame and combine them all together into a single animation. The FLIcks I saw were done with something called Rayscene (I think - it might have been Rayshade; that's what these people get for picking such similar names ;-) Will Rayscene automatically generate an entire series of frames? I'd like to have something I can run in batch mode, leave running all day (or all night, or all week...) and come back when it's finished. Is there another such package that is freely available? As noted above, I'm running a '386 DOS machine, but ideally the code would run identically under UNIX so I can run it on some of the faster machines I have access to. Thanks!