Animation Gallery


Any scene that involves a mathematical function, geometric relationship, or special effect can be made vibrant and alive through the insertion of even one well placed clock variable. Animations can be used to turn Pov-Ray into an amazing mathematical visualization laboratory. An animation can enthrall and transport, and show a fabulous new world.



==// Download the Animations by clicking the thumbnails \\==

, size = 2.08 Mb
"Biconic"

This animation is the result of work on a project for my hypersonic aerodynamics class at the U of M. The assignment was to calculate the lift and drag coefficients on a specific biconic body at an angle of attack of 16 degrees. To solve this problem, I used newtonian aerodynamics. I divided the surface into panels, found each one's normal, then its pressure coefficient from the dot product with the freestream direction, which I multiplied by the area of the panel. I summed up the forces from each panel, and found the total lift and drag forces acting on the body, which when divided by the reference area (the base of the object) gave the (dimensionless) lift and drag coefficients. POV-Ray worked very well for this project because of its built in vector functions, and the ease with which I could verify that it was operating correcly. I wanted to be able to visualize the changing pressure distributions as the angle of attack varied, so I whipped out this animation the day after the homework was due. I was also able to plot how the lift and drag coefficients vary with angle of attack. Sweet!

created by Ben Scheele || 2-25-05
Isoflowering Animation, size = 935 kb
"Isoflowering"

I started with an isosurface representation of a tanglecube, and changed a few parameters. I varied several of the paramenters over time and got this animation. I found a couple of neat stills along the way using this same basic setup, which you can see in the abstract gallery

Scene file for viewing here: isoflowering.txt
Scene file for downloading: isoflowering.pov

created by Ben Scheele || 5-9-04
Prismatic Blending Animation, size = 961 kb
"Prismatic Blending"

        I created this animation after discovering an interesting phenomenon. If you place a camera looking through a reflective cylinder with a glass-like texture, and place light sources outside the cylinder relatively close to its axis, the light will reflect off of the inside of the cylinder. If you increase the max_trace_level, the amount of reflections will increase. When you get very high, things start to blend together and new colors and many variety of patterns are generated. For this animation I rotated the cylinder through 180 degrees, and since the lights are arranged symmetrically, that is enough to turn this into a cyclic animation.

Scene file for viewing here: prismatic-blending.txt
Scene file for downloading: prismatic-blending.pov

created by Ben Scheele || 8-23-03
Whirling Recursion, size = 967 kb
"Whirling Recursion"

        This animation has whirling Sierpinski triangle forms. The camera angle and position changes to match the size of the subject. This has textures taken from the "Recurset2 Retex" image in the recursive section of the stills gallery. The translation of objects along the camera axis means that all levels can now be seen fully, and larger objects are allowed without overlap. Check the archive below for the older version's source code.

Bonus Wallpaper!

Scene file for viewing here: alternsierp2.txt
Scene file for downloading: alternsierp2.pov

created by Ben Scheele || 8-26-2003

Old animation scene files for downloading:


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