TITLE: Robot Factory
NAME: Dan Lauer
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: dlauer@optonline.net
TOPIC: Robots
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: djlrobot.mpg
ZIPFILE: djlrobot.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POVray 3.1.g

TOOLS USED: 

        POVray
        CMPEG
        Moray (to create the initial robot, before it was converted to a
#macro)
        Microsoft Paintbrush to create the credits image_map.


CREATION TIME: 

        I started working on this animation on 11/1/99, the day after I
submitted my "also-ran" entry into the "Horror" stills competition.  I worked
on it nearly every day for about an hour or two, usually while commuting to and
from work. The total rendering time was about 80 hours, but its hard to be
exact because some of it was done on other machines, and my primary machine is
a laptop which I had to put into hibernate mode when walking to and from the
train.


HARDWARE USED: 

        Pentium II, 366 MHz, 128Mb
        Pentium II, 400 MHz, 128Mb
        Pentium I, 133 MHz, 80Mb


ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 

        It's just another day at the Robot Factory. Except that a slight
mutation causes one of the normally green robots to come out blue. 
Fortunately, this does not prevent him from doing his job as an assembler
before being shipped off to a satisfied customer.


VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 

        Please set the viewer to "Play once and then stop, no rewind" to see the
credits at the end.
        

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 

When I started this project, I wanted to do something that merged the typical
cute humanoid sci-fi robot with the real-world efficient machines that are used
in factories.  As a programmer, I've always been interested in self-modifying
code and genetic algorithms, so I tried to tie those concepts in as well.

I completely developed the concept and the code for the whole scene before I had
figured out a creative way to "photograph" it.  From a creative, (as opposed to
technical,) point of view, that was probably the most difficult part.

I used Moray to model the first robot, then exported it, and did the rest of the
coding directly in POVray.  The key there was to convert it to a macro that
gave me full control of its arms, hands, leg, foot, head, eyes, lights and
color.

The real trick to the whole animation is a few cyclical clock time variables and
cycle counters.  There is a total of 21 robots that are coded in a cyclical
fashion.  However, instead of having each cycle end where it starts as would
normally be done, I have one robot's sequence end exactly where the next one's
begins.  This gives the illusion of having each robot move continuously through
the whole assembly line.  This illusion is enhanced by having the robot color
being dependent on the clock cycle counter.

If you have any questions as to how any of this was done, please feel free to
e-mail me.

OTHER CREDITS:
- Chris Colefax for his SPLINE.INC files that I used for camera motion.
- Chris Huff for his useful macros in objutil.inc and miscutil.inc.
- Peter Houston, creator of Blob Man. Although none of his code was used here
directly, the BlobMan macros provided inspiration for my MrRobot macro
- To the POVray Team for their usual excellence.
- To Erin Garlock, winner of the previous competition, whose quick response to a
request for last minute advice on how to increase the compression of an MPEG
file was absolutely essential.
- To my wonderful wife, who after being ignored for two months while I worked on
this, offered her advertising experience to help me "tell the story" in roughly
60 seconds. Without her creative editing, the think the whole point would have
been missed.

NOTE:
The fedex_pak.gif file was ripped from the www.fedex.com web site.  It is used
without explicit permission. I used it in an attempt to show the irony that, if
the day comes when robots build robot, they might still be shipped in the
ubiquitous FedEx pack.  I can only assume that if they care at all, they will
only take it as a complement.  I am in no way associated with the FedEx
company, and in no way derive any benefit in promoting them in the IRTC.

