TITLE: Ahoy Ye Scurvy Scum, Me Thinks There's Treasure To Be Found; Arrrggghhhh
NAME: Michael McGonigle
COUNTRY: Australia
EMAIL: gonzzz@hotmail.com
WEBPAGE: N/A
TOPIC: Stills topic... LANDMARKS
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: ahoy.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    3D Studios Max R 2.5

TOOLS USED: 
    Bryce 2.0, Poser 3.0, 4D Paint, 3D Studios Max R 2.5
PLUGINS USED: Digital forest beta, Scatter. 

RENDER TIME: 
    2 hours 26 mins

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 100, 16 meg memory

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


Jack and Jill like many other children are huge fans of Peter Pan... no, I
correct myself, Jack and Jill unlike many children are huge fans of the meanest
fictional character to sail the seven seas; Captain Hook !!!!! One afternoon
after the two children did some finger painting ( mind you Jill, not being the
best of artists got more paint one herself than on the paper ) were miserable
after watching the Disney cartoon "Peter Pan" due to Captain Hook's humiliating
defeat at the hands of that pesky little brat Peter. Being in a Captain Hookish
sort of mood they decided to outside into their backyard and play pirates.  

"I want to be Captain Hook," exclaimed Jill,

"You always get to go Captain Hook," complained Jack "I'm Captain Hook this
time!"

"OK fine then, I'll go Smee instead."

"You can't be Smee," said Jack, "Fido's being Smee this time!"

The two children bickered between themselves for some time, but their quarreling
quickly ceased when Fido's barking towards a familiar "MARK ON THE LAND"
brought them to notice the new mark on their lawn.

"X marks the spot," exclaimed Hook (Jack) "Grab a shovel and get diggin' me
hearties, there's buried treasure to be found ere', arrrrrggggghhhhh."
      
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Jack and Jill are looking for buried treasure in their backyard and as all good
pirates know, treasure is where X marks the spot !!!!! Instead of interpreting
the topic landmarks as a physical landmark like the Statue of Liberty, Pyrimids
etc, I've interpreted it as a "MARK ON THE LAND" ( in this case the mark is the
X ) 

PLEASE NOTE

I am colour blind and I couldn't really see the red x in my image. So when i
first created it, I made it black so I could see it and then I edited it from
there.  In the final render I just changed the colour from black to red. So now
I cant make out the x in the image, but my friends and family seem to be able
to see it fine and they sounded convincing enough to me so I left it red. So
what I am really saying is I apologise to all those colour blind viewers that
are like myself that cant take the pleasure in viewing the x, but I assure you
( like everyone else did ) that it is there !!!!


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


- The tree on the side and the bushes  in front of the fence were created with
the digiforest plugin in 3dsmax v1.1 and I exported this into 3dsmax v2.5
- The boy, girl and dog were created in poser 3 and exported into 3dsmax v2.5
- The grass was created by first making 4 unique blades of grass, each   with a
slightly different shade of green. Then I used the built in plugin in 3dsmax
v2.5 called    scatter on each individual blade of grass. ( scatter creates a
random array over a given     surface   in this case the ground   allowing you
to have each object perpendicular to the      surface ) The random array I
created consisted of about 15000 per blade so in the end when you   put all the
4 different blades of grass together you would get 4 x 15000 = 60000 blades of 
 grass.  
- The red cross and reeds on the back and side were made using the same
technique as the grass except on a much smaller scale and with different
coloured materials 
- The umbrella was created by lofting a rectangle around a wavy circular path,
then tapering it at one side and then tapering it with symmetry ( in middle )
to get the narrow look in the middle
- Everything else was created using geometry ( ie eyepatches, paper pirate hats,
flag, bricks, fence table and chairs etc. )
- I used 4d paint to paint onto some of the clothing the kids are wearing.
- The sky was created in bryce 2.0 as a image and the image was used as a
background in the render.

