Yet Another Stab at “Red Star Flyby”

I got back to work on my "Red Star Flyby" video this week. I hadn't done anything with it since just before my heart attack. I’d like to get it done and move on to other projects. I have far too many unfinished projects.
 

I first got interested in this idea when I read about Breakthrough Starshot. I realized that even under the most optimistic scenario, I would be dead long before they got any results. So, I decided I’d just make up my own imaginary trip.

It has been a while since I last used Blender, but I was able to get the hang of it again after a little experimentation. I learned a few new tricks while I was at it. The file has gotten much more complex and the video takes up to 8 hours to render.

Names

I gave names to the star and the planets. I just assigned a catalogue number for the star itself: MMC 898465843. This is not, so far as I know, a catalogue number that would ever be used. I did come up with a name as well, but I wasn’t happy with it. I might come up with something better later. I was tempted to call it Morison’s Star, but that is just too egotistical for me.

The innermost planet I call Bowser. It is somewhat larger than Earth. The next planet further out is Chuck, which is midway in size between the Earth and Mars. Next out is Dodgeball, which is very slightly larger than Earth.

Finally, the big planet is Elvis, which is about twice the size of Uranus. It had been about the size of Uranus, but it was also quite far from the camera, so looked small. I doubled the size. It is still smaller than Saturn though and it still fits inside my computer ;). I also gave it a moon. I thought it would make it look more interesting.

Camera Adjustments

I had the camera focus on the star and each of the planets in turn as it went through the system. The star just didn’t look very interesting, so I changed the timing of when the camera points to each of the planets. When I started on the project, I created an Excel spreadsheet to calculate where everything would be at a given time, and which way the camera should point. That made it much easier when I went to make changes.

Next Steps

One of the problems I have is that the star doesn’t look all that round. It looks more like one of those disco mirror balls. I’ve tried several ways to make it rounder. It is difficult to tell if any of that helps.

Once I have the animation the way I want it, I plan to add some sound. One of my ideas was to have a commentary track of people talking about what the screen shows. I see that as a lot more work than I want to do right now. I'll likely go with some sound effects or music. Something "spacy".

If I go with just sound effects or music, I should have some on screen data to describe what the viewer is seeing. I'd like to include a "mission" clock to give an idea how fast the space craft is going. My simulation is based on the Breakthrough Starshot project, where the space craft is travelling at about 20% the speed of light. The speed would vary as it flies through the system, but I decided not to try to work out exactly how much it would change.

I want include captions about the characteristics of star and the planets in the display. The sizes and distances from the star I have already. I used a website: https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/orbital-period to calculate the orbital periods. They turned out to be much longer than I had expected.

My intent was that Dodgeball would get about the same light from the star as the Earth gets from the Sun. With the orbital periods longer than I expected, I thought I better check if that were the case. I used the luminosities of the Sun, Proxima Centauri, and Barnard's Star with the inverse square law to compare. A star midway in size between Proxima Centauri, and Barnard's Star would work. I may adjust the size of the star to fit into this range.

In the past, I’ve done a lot of stop and start on this project. I hope I can keep my nose to the grindstone this time.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Slow return to Writing

Since my heart attack I have found it difficult to get back to my writing and film projects. I have started to make progress on a couple writing projects lately.

I joined a group of people who get together to talk and work on their writing. I found the writing exercises we do a good prod to start writing. I am working on a couple of projects that came out of discussions at the group.

Conspiracy Theory Story

The first story came out of an off-topic discussion we had at one session about conspiracy theories. I talked about a theory I made up a while back that I called “The First Person in Space”. One of the writers suggested it might make a good basis for a story. Over the last couple of months, I have played around with the idea.

I wrote a short script and have done a couple of rewrites. Initially I wanted to clarify just what the theory was. In the latest rewrite I tried to develop and differentiate the characters.

The script has three characters, a woman and two men. In the earlier drafts the two men were indistinguishable from each other. I developed some back story and motives for them, which helped me recognize which one should have which lines and how they would say them.

I haven’t done much about the woman character, other than show that she is smarter than the other two. She is the one who proposes the theory. I haven’t decided if she believes the theory or is just having some fun with it.

I felt good about the rewrites, but I think I can do mare to make the characters more interesting. The other problem I see is that I don’t have a good ending. I also struggle to determine what point I want to make with the story.

Another issue that concerns me is the danger I see in proposing a conspiracy theory. There are people who believe even the most absurd conspiracy theories. I don’t want anyone to believe my theory. I want to make it clear that it is a fiction. One challenge is that my theory is more plausible than some of the more popular theories. I’ll need to come up with ways to make it easy to debunk.

Election Story

The guy who runs the writing group suggested that we each write a short script about an election. Then we could review and discuss it at one of our sessions.

I kind of cheated. Years ago, I wrote a short story called "Hello, my Name is Bob", which is about an election. So, I reworked it as a script. That was straightforward for the most part. I had originally conceived it as a movie, so for the most part, all I had to do was reformat.

I had to give the minor characters names and descriptions. I tightened up the dialogue a little and cut most of the action descriptions.  The biggest change I made was to switch the order of a couple of the scenes. When I reread the story, it seemed so obvious that they were in the wrong order that I wondered why I wrote it that way.

I went through a couple of minor rewrites. I had thought in the past of maybe developing the story into a film, but never gave it much serious thought. Now that I’ve reworked it, I think that maybe I should go ahead and turn it into a film. I think it could be expanded into a longer film.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

New Video On-line: “Sunset #7”

I posted a new video called “Sunset #7” on YouTube. The title is apt, since it is video of a sun set. I made to help people relax.

I did two version. The first version is 83 minutes long. The second version, for impatient people, 5 minutes long. Some people won’t want to watch a sunset for an hour and a half.

“Sunset #7” (Long Version):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OgIzJ9WE50

“Sunset #7 for Impatient People”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQBreJDpcUs

My inspiration came when I came across many videos of nature scenes while I looked for relaxation videos on YouTube. Some of them run for up to 12 hours long. I find they do help me relax. They can also be quite popular with millions of views. I hope I get a few views.

Video

As should be obvious from the title, this isn’t my first attempt. I shot several sunsets in 2017 and then several more in 2018 before I got one that I liked. The image quality goes down as it gets darker, so I had to cut off the end to avoid the worst of it. In the version for impatient people there are some obvious shifts in the exposure, but I didn’t notice that in the full-length version.

Audio

I wanted to use the audio from the recording. Unfortunately, it was too quiet, except for some distracting loud noises. Earlier I created an artificial surf sound audio to help me relax when I go to bed. I used the white noise generator and tremolo effect in Audacity to create the sound. I took that as a starting point and built up a soundscape that is supposed to sound like wind in the trees. Surf sounds and wind sounds are not that different.

Now that I’ve gotten this video done, I want to get back to my “Red Star Flyby” video.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

"Red Star Fly-by" Slowdown

Well, after a productive week, I kind of let things slide. I did make some progress though.

Aiming the Camera

I worked on the aiming problem in the animation. I experimented with some of the Blender animation features to see if I could get Blender to handle the aiming issue. From what I can tell, it should be possible, but I wasn’t able to get it to work for me, so went back to the way I had done it so far.

Sometimes the problem was the interpolation Blender did, but a few times it turned out I had mistyped some information. I don't think I got everything, but I think it looks OK. I think I’m done with this step now.

A More Interesting Star

I tried to do something with the star to make it more interesting to look at. Right now, it is featureless and rather boring to look at. I had cut down the length of time the camera aims at it, but it still seems to go by very slowly. I tried to add texture to the star surface. I tried to add an atmosphere layer to give some distortion. Nothing I tried got me anything I thought looked better. In fact, I couldn’t see any difference at all.

Captions and Audio

My original plan was to add captions to the video to describe what is on the screen. Then would add some "spacy" sounds in the background. NASA has produced some audio files for various planets in the solar system based on the radio waves they produce. Some of the sounds are very eerie. I used some for my “旅行火星 (My Trip to Mars)” video.

I discussed my plans with someone at the script group I joined. He suggested that I have some voice overs. For example, a "mission control" voice, a news anchor and "color commentator". I have thought about the suggestion at length. I find the idea attractive, but it would also mean it will take me longer to finish the movie.

I would need to write dialogue for the character, find voice actors to play the parts, and then arrange for the sound recording. I’m not all that keen to take that route. On the other hand, I wanted to take a similar approach with the revised version of “The Barrier” I want to finish. It would be an opportunity to practice the method on a small project before I tackle the big project.

Links:

“旅行火星 (My Trip to Mars)” https://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/my-trip-to-mars/

“The Barrier” https://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/the-barrier/

Red Star Fly-by – Some Progress – 2018 September 23

Well, I did make some progress this week, after a week where I didn’t make any. I had run into some snags that I wasn't sure how to deal with. I had to take a break to decide what to do next.

Camera Movement

The most finicky problem was the camera movement. When I let Blender interpolate the animation, the camera movement looks "strange". So far, I haven’t come across any way to control the interpolation, other than specify more intermediate positions. I also found that I had mistyped some of the specifications for the camera movement, so I can’t put all the blame on Blender. It didn’t take me all that long to fix most of the problems. I still have more to do though. The rest seems to be more messed up, so it could take me longer.

I also adjusted the times when the camera shifted from planet to another. I wanted a more even distribution between the planets. I also wanted to cut down the time I look at the star, since it isn’t all that interesting to look at. I did a test video and I think it looks better now.

Starscape

Earlier, I created a starscape back drop. I set it up as a cylindrical image that encircles the star system I created for the animation. I felt it turned out OK. The background needs to look the same where ever the camera is positioned. When the starscape is static, there isn’t too much of a problem, but I decided it would be better to have it animated. I set it up to track the camera location, so it is always the same distance from the camera.

When I was about three quarters of the way through, I realized that I there was an easier way to do. I wasn’t all that sure it would work, so I decided to finish it the way I started.

The other problem I’ve run into with the starscape was that when I would zoom in on a planet, the stars looked bigger. That doesn’t look right. I should get a narrower range of view, but the stars shouldn’t look any larger. I haven't figured out how to deal with that yet. I want to do this because a couple of the planets are quite far away and look small. I’d like to be able to have them more visible.

Titles

In the final version I wanted to have titles giving the planets names and descriptions. The standard practice in Astronomy is to give plants letters, starting with b. I also wanted to give each planet a nickname. I came up with "Bowser", "Chuck", "Dodgeball" and "Elvis". I suppose I could have gone with Diego for “d”, but I felt that would be a bit too egotistical. I have come up with a name for the star as well, but I am just not happy with it. I also developed a star catalogue ID for it. I don’t want it to be any real system.

Planet and Moon Images

I added three moons to the system. Mostly I wanted to use them to justify illuminating the shadowed side of a couple of the planets. I had to develop surface images for them. I took the opportunity to modify the surface images for a couple of the planets too.

I’m am not very good at creating images from scratch, so I got some moon and planet images in Mercator projection that NASA created. Some of the images are easy to identify, so I tried to modify them, so they would look reasonably alien. Sometimes I altered the colors and in others I cut and pasted parts of more than one moon/planet together. I am still not 100% happy with the images I have. I may take another shot at them later.

What’s Next?

Over the next week I want to get all the camera positions fixed properly. Then I want to work on the captions and titles. I’ve started to give some thought to the sound track. I’ll likely use the same approach I used for my trip to Mars video.

I may still go back to have another look at the planet images. Once I have new images, it is relatively easy to change them. The hard part is getting the images.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog