Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Line integral of scalar field.gif

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File:Line integral of scalar field.gif, featured[edit]

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes.Voting period ends on 23 Aug 2012 at 17:12:21 (UTC)
Visit the nomination page to add or modify image notes.

Animation explaining the line integral over a scalar field.
  •  Info created, uploaded and nominated by Kieff
  •  Support Per authorship and nomination. Additionally, I believe it fits the relevant criteria:
  • Sharp graphics and smooth animation, with meaningful use of colors and high quality anti-aliasing.
  • Non-localized captions allow for its use across all projects, regardless of language.
  • Significantly improves the relevant article, bringing intuitive sense to the sometimes cryptic mathematical formalism.
  • It's mathematically accurate, and the standard presentation of the concept in classrooms and textbooks.
  • Well-paced, so each step can be absorbed by the viewer.
  • Public domain license.
  • It's cool looking.
I also believe it's one of the best among my recent submissions, and I'm proud of it :) -- — Kieff | KieffWikipedia | Talk 17:12, 14 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The stretching illustrates the rectification of curve, which shows the importance to take into account its arc length. The line integral is along the length of the curve, and not a simple distance from a to b or some projection of the curve onto a line. This is what the r(t) part represents, and it's a very important bit. This other animation I created recently illustrates what the arc length of a curve means and what rectification does. As for the colors, they're just to illustrate the overall field and the shape of the surface better. There's no need to explain it too much because they are arbitrary and irrelevant to the concept being presented. — Kieff | KieffWikipedia | Talk 12:32, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • OK. I don't find it obvious that the stretching was a mean to get the length of the arc. On the other animation, the curve transitions to a straight line and the concept is far more obvious. Here, it only misleads (me at least) to understand "simple stretch". And even more since last step "stretches" the arrows again. Even though my math is something of the past, I should be able to get the meaning of an animation which claims to explain complex concepts in an intuitive manner. Or I shall I open again my math books ? ;) One more thing, I think I would display the plan before the red line (otherwise the meaning is unclear at first). - Benh (talk) 15:22, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Aaah I should really be more careful before writing. The red line goes from curve to straight... and then only do you change the point of view. Maybe the arrow stretching mislead me... Sorry. Looks to me mostly me not understanding well. Then only last sentence is an issue. Changed my vote.  Support - Benh (talk) 15:30, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
All right. I'll see if I can address those two issues. I should have a new version up within the hour. — Kieff | KieffWikipedia | Talk 15:40, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Here it is. Not a very significant change, and for some reason the new version is 200 kB larger. I don't get it. I uploaded it to imgur instead. — Kieff | KieffWikipedia | Talk 18:32, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks a lot for effort (and although u had my support already ;) ) I think these little changes (especially the one on last step) enhance the understanding and space isn't a concern for Commons, so you could probably overwrite. - Benh (talk) 21:40, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That's not entirely fair for animated images, and even the FP page mentions it:
Resolution – Images (with the exception of animations, videos, and SVGs)
There are good technical reasons for the reduced dimensions, too. The MediaWiki running in here has a 12.5 MP limit for generating animated thumbnails. This counts for all the frames, so at 400x300, the hard limit is about 100 frames. For 60 frames, I can go as high as 800x600. However, I explicitly try to keep it under that so that not only the animation may be resized if absolutely necessary, but the original is small enough so that it may be included in the article in its non-resized form.
I do this because it preserves the dithering and palette management that was tailor-made for the animation. The automatic thumbnails are usually grainy, they mess with the colors and are full of artifacts. Here's this animation at 300px. You'll see that the frames leave ghost "blotches" behind, and in the last part, there are even phantom white lines across the plane. This is not acceptable and can ruin a good animation sometimes.
I could make a high resolution version, but to be honest, it would add nothing to the animation. — Kieff | KieffWikipedia | Talk 16:37, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Could you make a higher resolution version and upload it separately(and link to it on the description page)? Images on Commons are reusable outside Wikimedia projects as well. A higher resolution version could be used for example in a slideshow presentation.--Gauravjuvekar (talk)
A higher resolution version would be better as a video, though. But sure, I can do that. — Kieff | KieffWikipedia | Talk 14:51, 16 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
OK, here's the HQ video version. I don't know if I encoded it completely right, though. It seems to play fine, but Media Player Classic and VLC complain about it. I used ffmpeg2theora-0.29 for the encoding. — Kieff | KieffWikipedia | Talk 15:38, 16 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
 Support--Gauravjuvekar (talk) 06:13, 17 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Confirmed results:
Result: 11 support, 0 oppose, 0 neutral → featured. /Yann (talk) 16:58, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This image will be added to the FP gallery: Animated
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