Butterflies in the Rain Appeared in SIGGRAPH 97 Computer Animation Festival Image featured in Computer Graphics World, May 1997
	Piano model, layout, sound, post Mark Fontana Butterfly, water, fish animation Kirk Bowers Lighting, rendering, compositing Steve May Copyright (c) 1997 Mark Fontana Kirk Bowers Steve May Produced at The Ohio State University
Butterflies in the Rain tells the story of a butterfly exploring a piano that is mysteriously being played by water droplets falling from above. The piece is accompanied by (and synchronized to) MIDI music data transcribed from the reproducing piano roll "Butterflies in the Rain", a piece from the 1930's composed by Sherman Myers and played by Frank Milne. The animation makes extensive use of procedural techniques. All modeling and animation was done using AL, an animation system developed by Steve May. PhotoRealistic RenderMan ® (Pixar) was used for rendering. Houdini (Side Effects) was used for compositing. All work was performed on Silicon Graphics workstations.
Quicktime of Butterflies in the Rain (40M) Wireframe rendering of a single piano key mechanism
Selected frames from the animation:
All images and animations on this web page are Copyright (c) 1997, Mark Fontana, Kirk Bowers, Steve May.