Coronation demo

Richard_Russell

This is John Ireland's Epic March which was played at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 (transcribed for computer by Gerald Pye on 31st October 1981). It is accompanied by a 3D model of St Edward's Crown, animated in BBC BASIC. You can run it yourself in a suitable browser (although it's a large model and slow to load) here.

Richard_Russell

The usual reason for splitting the 3D 'world' into multiple objects is, of course, so that they can be moved independently. That doesn't apply in this case, but the crown has still been split into four objects because it comprises different materials, which have very different optical properties.

In the video below I have separated the four objects for clarity:

• The gold, which has a specular reflection that, unusually, isn't white.
• The velvet, which reflects mostly diffuse, although directional, light.
• The ermine, which largely reflects ambient, non-directional, light.
• The jewels, which have a white specular component with a high 'power'.

Each has a corresponding material{} structure in the code, allowing the various parameters to be adjusted for best results.