How to create your own "Fly Through" animation:

Download and Install PovRay

PovRay is a free ray tracing system. It is easy to download and easy to install.

• Download Povray from www.povray.org. There are versions for a number of different operating systems.
• Follow the directions found at the PovRay website to install the package and give the demo (included with the download) a try.

Download the files needed to create the images.

Click on "Download" below to download files for this step:

• Include files (.inc) that define the pipes. The .inc files were created with a macro from Gilles Tran. When you have a chance take a look at his amazing PovRay art.
• Pov file (.pov) to generate the individual frames that the animation is created from.
• Init file (.ini) that defines number of frames and other parameters.
• Readme file

Render the images

The readme file included with each of the downloads provides more details than the basic steps below.

• Create a directory to contain the animation files.
• Copy the AnimationPalace zip file contents to the new directory and unzip.
• Start PovRay and load the .pov and .inc files from the your new directory.
• In PovRay select the size, quantity, and quality of the images you wish to create.
• Select the ini file from the unzipped files.
• Start rendering.
• Wait for the the render to complete. In some cases this can be several hours to several days. You can get an idea of how long the rendering will take after 10 or 20 images are created and then extrapolating the total render time.

Now create the AVI file.

After all of the individual images have been created it is time to combine the images into an AVI

• If you have a program that takes a series of BMP images and converts them to an AVI now is the time to use it.
• VirtualDub is the program we use to create the AVIs. The program takes the images created by PovRay and builds an AVI. To get a copy of VirtualDub go to www.sourceforge.org and search on VirtualDub. It has been downloaded over 42 million times and is a mature tested program.
• You may need to experiment with various codecs and compression settings to arrive at an AVI that can play smoothly on your PC.

Build the screen saver.

This is an optional step but playing your animation as a screen saver is a great way of showing it off.

• If you have a program that builds screen savers then use this program to create a screen saver from the AVI generated in the above step. Follow the directions included with your program that describe how to build and install the screen saver.
• There are a number of screen saver builders available on the net. You might try Daves AV Screensaver from www.sourceforge.org. We have not tried this program but since it is free it may be worth a try. Several shareware screen savers are available for reasonable fees.

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