@database Storm
@author "Simon Brewer"
@$VER: 1.0 (27.09.97)
@node MAIN "Storm Animation"

@{b} Storm Animation
====================================@{ub}

@{b}Created by Simon Brewer@{ub}

My picture 'Storm' was in the Amiga Format gallery in issue 101, and there was a 
comment that they wondered if there was an animation to go with it.

There is now!

@{b}Storm : The Anim@{ub}

This took me a while to do.  First I needed lightning flashes.  Using a flat poly and 
an image sequence I started to keyframe in random flashes of lightning at various 
frames on the anim. I spent a whole hour doing this then realised that I could just 
load in the 'airship in a storm' anim from the LightWave CD and just delete the 
airship, leaving me with pre-setup lightning flashes! (Doh!).
After doing this I re-textured the sky&ground object, and made the sea look more 
like sea with the aid of the crumple texture.  Waves were next.  I made a huge 
poly subdivided into 500 sections along the Z-axis, gave it the same sea texture as 
the sky&ground and then used a displacement map to affect the object's geometry. 
(i.e. Sorta like bump-mapping, but with real bumps made by the use of a greyscale 
iff map).  The map was given a velocity along the Z-axis so that the waves would 
move along the surface of the object.
The ship was then loaded in, and given keyframes at 0, 40, 80, and 120.  On each 
of these frames the pitch of the ship was altered up and down by a few degrees.  
The ship was given a slight bank from side to side as well.  The rain was created 
using a particle block, moving downwards each frame with particle blur turned on 
to give streaks of rain.  Small lens flares were added to each bolt of lighting to give 
that extra glow, and finally the camera move was put in, with a slight bank of the 
first and last frames.

The anim took ages to render (all the bumpmapping on the sea, the transparency 
for the clouds etc.).  I rendered to a ZIP disk, then loaded the frames into 
Mainactor and saved the anim out as an anim7 (for playback speed).
I am really pleased with the result

@{b}Running the Animation@{ub}

Storm:The Anim is a BIG anim and is in HAM8 Hi-Res interlaced for best quality to 
video.  Its set up to load Viewtek from C: and run just by clicking on its icon.
Viewtek will run Storm: The Anim from the CD-ROM if you don't have enough 
memory to load it in at once, but you will have to experiment with the 'Buffer_Size' 
tool-type.  Otherwise, you may need BigAnim (On the GFX Sensations CD, or 
Aminet probably) to run it  Also, go to your Prefs/Icontrol and make sure Mode 
Promotion is Off, as this will speed up the display. Try changing your screen mode 
to 2 colour low-res or something to free up as much chip ram as possible if you still 
have problems.

I hope that you can run Storm: The Anim and enjoy it!

I would appreciate any comments about my work.

If you would like to commission me then please phone or fax!


@{b}LEGAL NOTICE@{ub}

@{fg highlight}These animations are NOT PUBLIC DOMAIN and MAY NOT UNDER 
ANY CIRCUMSTANCES BE DISTRIBUTED TO AMINET, THE INTERNET OR ANY 
OTHER SOFTWARE LIBRARY. ONLY AMIGA FORMAT MAGAZINE HAS CURRENTLY 
PERMISSION TO DISTRIBUTE THESE ANIMATIONS VIA THEIR CD-ROM 
EDITION.@{fg text}

© Simon Brewer 1996-1997, and may not be used for any other project without 
written permission.


Simon Brewer

Tel/Fax 01279 434533
@endnode