This page contains links to the work of students of IOngineering at St. Mark's School of Texas. As an extension of Chapter 5, Digital Image Processing, (in the Infinity Project curriculum) we're investigating the operations underlying 3-D computer graphics.

The ongoing work of these juniors and seniors was created using Pandromeda software's Transporter & Generator tools to investigate the 3-D real-time images of planetary surfaces to be found in Parametric Hyperspace^©.

You can see our lead animator's work in developing mojoworld's for the exploration of earth science topics in the Digital Worlds Project.

Bottom line: The free download of the Transporter Tool (9 MBytes!) is well worth the wait!

We're investigating this software as an extension of Chapter 5's discussion of computer animation and because of our own interest in some of the special-effects (based on polygonal
3-D surfaces) that you see in the movies today.

Mojoworld^© software allows you to create and fly-through whole planets created from fractal math. You've seen this effect done for the moon in "Apollo 13", landscapes in "Phantom Menace" and "Final Fantasy", and other movies with large CG (computer generated) natural-looking landscapes, plants, atmospheric effects, and fire.

Instead of taking days to create several seconds of video, this new method extends matrix math by combining it with the ability of fractal geometry to function at the very large and very small scales at the same time. A single set of parameters can thus control many aspects of a planet's terrain, water, and atmosphere with minimum computational overhead.

In 3-D geek speak it means that a relatively small data matrix, with modifications based on four underlying fractal settings, can generate real-time renderings (RDR) by performing iterations on polygons and other solid primitives. These fractals use noise, the same stuff we wanted to remove in audio processing, to create more realistic, natural images!

Virtual-reality simulations can now be done on the computing machines of 2001.

Each entry has a format. You can right click on the description to open or save the file to your computer by choosing the "Save Target As" choice and then designating a location on your local computer.

More downloads and Mojoworld planets will be coming so bookmark us and visit again!

MOJOWORLD FILES & ANIMATIONS

• A low resolution QuickTime virtual rendering of a mountainous terrain with lakes, a thin atmosphere at and a weak sun (note the stars are visible).

By:           Francis
Date:         12-2001
Files Needed: movie3.qvr (WARNING! 1.6 MB file!) and 
Apple's QuickTime 5.0 plug-in

Bookmark:  planet pan1.qvr

• A high resolution QuickTime virtual rendering of Pixel Cove. This fjord-like setting with a beautiful shoreline has very a clumpy star field (nebulae) and an unusual atmosphere that cuts out at a uniform height above the planet. The particle effects (water, air, clouds, stars) are based on fractal Brownian motion. It took about 15 minutes to create this movie on an Athalon 1.1 GHz CPU with 512 MB RAM. Note that aliasing artifacts can be a good thing- the water tends to sparkle when you rotate your viewpoint! The underlying Mojoworld is called subpixel beach.

By:           Mr. R
Date:         12-2001
Files Needed: pixel cove.qvr (WARNING! 2.34 MB file!) 
and Apple's QuickTime 5.0 plug-in

Bookmark:  pixel cove

Document Format Definitions

 
.png    a nearly universal graphics file format - a picture of a planetscape
.qvr      a QuickTime 5.0 Cubic Virtual reality file movie. This "bubble-world" allows you to spin your perspective in 360°. It starts with 6 images on the faces of a cube that are then digitally stitched and warped into a "bubble" with you at the center. Requires Apple's QuickTime 5.0 plug-in for web browser viewing.
.html    web page (Hypertext Markup Language)
.doc    Microsoft Word 2000 format. Can be read by Office 97 (with some functions unusable)
.rtf    Rich Text File. Can be read across computing platforms.
.zip    archive file for Windows; requires WinZip shareware (or other such compression utilities) to read. Used to upload large files in a compressed format.
.avi    Audio-visual or Windows Media player movie.
.pdf    Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format. Free reader available at Adobe software.

IOngineering @ St. Mark's School of Texas