[Server-sky] animations needed

[Keith Lofstrom]

Who wants to show me how to do some graphics?

I would like to see some examples of some animations, which I
can proceed to modify to show some stuff.  These will be for
open-office slides, and for the website, so I want to create
animated gifs.  Working from examples can be easier than 
wading through manuals.  I don't need shading or light sources,
or anything complicated like that, but I would like hidden surfaces.

Assume that I want to parametrically describe orientations
and trajectories of objects versus time.   In order of 
complexity, I would like to see:

1) A top view of a sphere of specified radius in orbit
around another sphere in a non-circular orbit.  Don't
bother to get the angle versus time right, if the x,y,z
positions can be specified with equation, I can feed it
a more complicated one.

2) Same as (1), but with an arbitrary choice of viewpoint.
Perspective would be nice but not required.

3) Same as (2), but with a open grid brick.

4) Same as (2), but with multiple moving spheres following
multiple orbits.

5) Same as (4), with two views of the same system from
two viewpoints on one gif.

6) Same as (5), but with a crude picture of a serversat
(one gray circle 3x, 3 white circles 1x within a triangle)
orbiting.

7) A rotating earth in the middle of things would be cute.
See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rotating_globe.gif
for an example of a nice one.  I would need to scale it and
change the rotation speed, of course.  Not absolutely required.

If I can see those animations, and how they are made, I
can figure out how to do animations of other things.  Yes,
it would be nice to add a sun, look at shading of one object
by another, etc., but that is more than I need now.

I am partial to Perl and Gnuplot, but any open source system
(besides Java) without a heck of a lot of obscure dependencies
will work. I've downloaded Blender, but it looks far more
complicated than I need, and it may not be able to do some
of the simple geometric things I want.  Do not assume Ubuntu.
I am using an RPM-based system, but assume I can compile apps
from source if necessary.

Extra bonus points if you make a wiki page describing the 
above steps.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs