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(Best
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CREATIVE
AND PRODUCTION CREDITS
Pat Chipman,
designer and producer of "DYMAXION IMPACT" animation
(check out some of thework that Pat has done at http://home.austin.rr.com/globeworks/
).
R. Buckminster
Fuller, designer of Dymaxion Map.
PURPOSE
OF CREATION OF "DYMAXION IMPACT"
To dynamically
illustrate to many human eyes the low distortion of
the Dymaxion Map projection, and to make a groundwork
animation for future global impact animations.
BACKGROUND
The original
idea for something that resembles "DYMAXION IMPACT"
came during a meeting of Global Energy Network, International.
This is a non-profit group organized to promote the
idea conceived by Buckminster Fuller in the 1960's
that great energy savings would occur if all the Earth
were connected to one continuous electrical power
grid. Animation of this concept might better explain
its purpose, we reasoned and vaguely dreamt. Soon
afterwards I saw that an animation of the Dymaxion
Map folding into an icosahedron was possible using
3D AutoCAD and I produced exactly that in about 2
days. Months prior to this I had compiled latitude
and longitude data from an atlas and produced a 3
dimensional shoreline model of the Earth and made
it spin with AutoCAD and Animator. The next step seemed
natural - to combine these 2 animations. The result
would be a DYNAMIC illustration of Fuller's icosahedral
animations, and personally a satisfying accomplishment.
The morph between an icosahedral and a spherical Earth
proved most challenging and my crude methods become
well disguised by the eye tricks of movement and the
relatively low resolution of Animator.
In the
future I hope to show important global trends dynamically
(i.e. time lapsed) to bring into better perspective
what is happening here.
HARDWARE
AND SOFTWARE USED
DTK '486-25
computer, 12MB RAM, 200MB hard disk Vcache, AutoCAD
releases 10 and 11, Animator, QuickBasic
METHODS
774 slides
made using AutoCAD released 10 and 11, stitched together
and played with Animator.
Icosahedral
Earth:
Dymaxion
Map digitized in, triangular areas separated in layers
and layer/zones within these areas, incrementally
rotated at the triangular folds using a script file
and a UCS retrievable by entity. When folded this
icosahedron was easily rotated about an axial UCS.
Spherical
Earth:
4500 shoreline
points of latitude and longitude interpolated then
translated to Cartesian coordinates and imported to
AutoCAD 10. (Accuracy varied with my mood as these
interpolated estimations took literally months.) Following
through with my initial enthusiasm proved an endurance
test as I subsequently realized easier methods to
achieve a spherical Earth shoreline database. Well,
I did it myself and felt good about that. This was
easily animated to spin and meshed together with the
morphed icosahedron.
Morph between
Icosahedron and Sphere:
6 zones
on each triangular face were incrementally moved from
their icosahedral positions to an approximately spherical
orientation. The equilateral triangular edges were
changed to arcs and incrementally curved to the appropriate
spherical radius. The length of these edge/arcs was
held constant as required by Fuller's projection method.
3/14/91
Pat Chipman
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This
Flash 5 Version:
Originally
viewed on the PC by using a .gif viewer called AAPLAY.EXE.
The .gif files were captured one-by-one (all 774)
using the SWBCAP.EXE screen capture program. The resultant
screens were imported into Flash 5 and aligned for
viewing through a mask.
10/22/00
Paul-Michael Dekker
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