Entry code: qwoaqw
Name      : Joel Yliluoma
Frame rate: 15
Povray scc5 contest entry
Copyright (C) 1992,2007 Joel Yliluoma - http://iki.fi/bisqwit/
Title: Time machine
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My first idea for this submission was as follows:
"a light sparkling show with an object in center and some bits circling it".
I wrote that into a file, and then began writing povray code.

For the center object, I thought of making a crystal cluster, as in
one you might find in a mine, mineral crystals. I decided to construct
it from boxes merged together in an angular construction, created with
a loop.
As for texture and other properties, I had just one thought:
It must shine a lot of light. So I made it slightly transparent,
put an emissive media in it, put a light source in the center,
and even put a haze-like thing over it to add a HDRI-like light
gloss effect.
I wanted to preserve some details in it, so eventually I ended up
moving the lightsource outside though.

After the center object was done, I decided to use the same engine
that created the center object (function Y), for creating the circling bits.
I experimented a lot with what the bits should look like, and through
trial I settled on the semi transparent cubes that look like rose petals.

For motion, the original idea was to make everything revolve around. After
some experimentation, I found that constant revolution would be too dizzying,
because there's just 100 frames and if I want a complete loop, it must rotate
fast. So I made them rock back and forth. Same for the center bit.
In the center bit, I introduced three different levels of motion, and after
experimenting, it reminded me of a time machine so that's how this animation
got its name.

I found 512 bytes to be an ample amount for this kind of entry; I never had
to fight the limit. It just settled itself quite nicely. Perhaps, the next
animated contest could be made for 384 bytes? That would make challenge.
Then again, we got two months of time for crafting these (I used two days),
so probably this submission doesn't stand chances against cool submissions
like tripedal marching insects, gearboxes or clockworks, photorealistic
rooftops in rainfall or whatever people will create :)

I created this scene entirely using the long version .pov file, and wrote
and used a script to generate the short version with a few simple filters.

  sed 's@//.*@@' \
  | tr '\012' ' ' \
  | perl -pe 's@/\*.*?\*/@@g' \
  | perl -pe 's/(?<![a-z0-9A-Z_]) +//g' \
  | perl -pe 's/ (?![A-Za-z0-9_])//g' \
  | perl -pe 's/(?<=[0-9])[ ,](?=[A-Z_a-z])//g' \
  | perl -pe 's/(\.[0-9]+),\./\1./g'

Things I wished to implement but couldn't:
- Beams of light shining from the center object
- More impressive circling bits than cubes or spheres
  (tried copies of the center object but devising a
   different look for them turned out to be too complex,
   would probably have run out of the limit)
- Better looking glow on the center object
- Focal blur, blurring the bits but keeping the center sharp
  (the bits are too close to the center and the center
   is too large, no aperture selection worked satisfyingly)
- Make it possible to loop the background without having it
  spin dizzyingly fast or have it rock back&forth.

This movie is intended to be looped.
An AVI (not looping) of this submission can be downloaded at http://bisqwit.iki.fi/kala/povray/scc5_a.avi (702 KiB). It uses a H.264 codec (x264).