ABOUT THE MARQUEE

Pov-Ray makes use of ray tracing techniques to allow you to create amazingly complex images. You define almost every aspect of an object in three dimensional space. You then define the location and intensity of the light sources, the location of the camera and the point of focus. The image rendered is what would appear if you were looking through the camera. You can change an image simply by moving the camera to another location or changing it's point of focus.

A script file is used to create the marquee. Typically, the file is edited to change the message that appears on the display. Then the script is run to create a quick low resolution proof to make sure the spacing is correct. Once everything looks good, a high resolution 1280 x 1024 image is created with anti-aliasing turned on. This products a much more realistic image.

For the old marquee, as shown above, photo editing software is used to add the "Theatre Booster" logo to the resulting image.

For the new marquee with the logo box on top, an overlay is done using Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) constructs. This makes changing the marquee much easier.

A quick look at the letter "A" in "ACTS" and either of the show times would make you think that there is something wrong with the font. In actuality, the light shaded areas on the letters are reflections of the light coming from the light panels behind them. The light reflects off the edge of the letter and into the camera. This is also the reason for the shading on the light blue light bulbs around the perimeter of the marquee. Reflection off of the letters can be mitigated by reducing the thickness of the letters or changing their surface texture. But I kinda like it.

If you have more questions, feel free to send an Email to the Webmaster. There's a link at the bottom of this page.