Name: Yuriy Kozlov
id: ykozlov

License:
	Copyright (C) 2007 Yuriy Kozlov
	This work is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
	To view a copy of this license, visit http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
		
Methods:
	Character:
		The character is Konqi, the KDE mascot (www.kde.org).  The model was created by basse and was found at
		www.kulma.org
	Grass:
		The grass was created according to this tutorial:
		http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=68269
		The plane was much bigger, so a large amount of particles was used.  The grass is still rather sparse,
		but making more particles makes for a very long rendering time.  The grass was also made longer
		than in the tutorial because of the size of the konqi model.
	Character animation:
		The desired effect was to make konqi dance, then jump.
		I selected one bone at a time and keyframed it's location and rotation before doing anything with it.
		I then moved usually about 15 frames at a time and grabbed or rotated the bone to a different position.
		Most movements only required rotation, but I had to grab and move his feet a couple of times.
		The jumping action was done by rotating his thighs, then selecting all the bones in the leg and moving
		them outwards.  Without moving the legs, the thighs protruded into his body.  At the top of the jump
		I selected all the bones and moved konqi up.
	Text:
		The text at the beginning was keyframed when it's small and in the corner.  It was then moved to be in
		full view and keyframed (location) again.  It's then scaled down to be really small so that it wouldn't
		get in the picture again, although it didn't anyway because of the changing camera angle.
		The credits text started out small and out in a corner.  I started by putting it right in the camera view
		and making a keyframe for that location/rotation/scale on the last frame.  Then I moved it out of
		view and made it small and keyframed it at the point right before it should move on screen.
		Then halfway between those frames, I made a keyframe with the text scaled oversized to get the blow
		up and then shrink back to normal effect.
		Both texts were extruded, and the credit text was beveled.
	Lighting animation:
		The Konqi model came with two "sun" lights.  The main one was not touched.  The secondary light
		was keyframed RGB every 30 frames with different colors.  This is visible on the darker parts
		of Konqi's body.  This light also gets more intense when konqi jumps.  This is hard to see
		because the camera spins around to the back at that point, but it's visible.
	Camera animation:
		The camera was keyframed (location/rotation) after the title comes out.  The camera moves about
		a 90 degree angle about Konqi and most of the animation is from that angle.  When konqi jumps,
		the camera moves to a similar spot behind him.  Then it moves closer to Konqi, then back out
		to it's original positions, with keyframes at those places.
	Material animation:
		The green material used for Konqi's skin was keyframed for alpha near the end of the clip.  At the last
		frame alpha was changed to almost 0 and keyframed again.  There are still some other materials
		on Konqi, so he becomes white.
		
Credits:
	Thanks to basse for the Konqi model, found at www.kulma.org and distributed under the LGPL.
	Thanks to Imperitor of the blenderartists forums for the grass tutorial.
	
Bibliography:
	basse's blender work: http://www.kulma.org/blender/
		also see releasenotes.txt
	Grass tutorial: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=68269
		
Problems:
	The main problem I encountered was that rendering took a very long time.  The 10 second clip took
	3 and a half hours to render with two threads on a Core Duo processor.  Ray tracing and shadows
	were enabled.  Disabling raytracing improves rendering times, but makes for rather dull renderings.
	The solution would be to install a rendering engine (Gelato) that can render on an nVidia GPU or
	to set up a rendering cluster.
	The grass ended up sticking through Konqi's feet.  One solution to this would be to enable collision
	detection, but that would make rendering times a lot worse than they already are.
	Konqi hangs in the air a little too long after he jumps and the camera stops moving.  This was
	not intentional but I didn't notice it until the render was done.  Similarly, the movements
	ended up generally too jerky.