TITLE: Mindgrowth
NAME: Peter Dolan
COUNTRY: United States of America
EMAIL: pdolan@jps.net
WEBPAGE: www.jps.net/bdolan/
TOPIC: Gardens
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: mndgrwth.jpg
ZIPFILE: mndgrwth.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    3D Studio default scanline

TOOLS USED: 
    Kinetix 3D Studio Max 3.0 educational, Adobe Photoshop 5.0, Sony
Mavica digital camera, Scanport flatbed scanner

RENDER TIME: 
    4 30

HARDWARE USED: 
    P200 MMX, 40MB RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

        Whenever we encounter a new idea our minds grow and expand as a garden
does when given sunlight.  Here we see that growth take form.
        The image is somewhat symbolic: the tree and the bush, the garden of the
mind, represent knowledge (the left hemisphere, which is concerned with
intellectual vs. artistic matters, has a smaller plant -- it is underdeveloped
-- which is why the book under study is my Calculus text, the person is
building on a weakness).  The lanterns hanging from the branches are the
guiding light of instruction.  I put the hand in an approaching pose to
indicate that it is the new ideas which cause us to grow.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

        I used a copy of 3D Studio Max R3 educational which I brought home from
my high school during Christmas break (I also used the school's computer for
modeling a bit before the break - P2-333, 128mbRAM).  The head is modeled and
textured after a friend of mine, who was kind enough to allow me to take
several pictures of her head using my school's digital camera (my reproduction
doesn't do her justice, she's much prettier IRL).  The pictures were used also
for texturing; I used Photoshop to modify them into bump and specularity maps. 
The eyes in the original picture were too dark for my taste, so I scanned a
picture out of my mother's physiology text and used them instead.
        The head is modeled using Max's new surface tools (you'll see a patch in
the .zip because I collapsed it), it took me about 2.5 weeks plus tweaking at
odd intervals (it took so long because it's my first real head).  The brain is
a modified sphere with displacement mapping.  The trees are meshsmoothed
meshes, and the leaves were created using a free hair plugin that I got off of
the internet.  The hand is a meshsmoothed mesh, and was posed using meshselect
and bend.  The book, the textures of which were obtained with a scanner from my
Calculus text, is made of primitives with bends and FFD's.
        All of the lighting is done with default lights; no radiosity
simulations were used.
        I would have included all of the necessary files in the .zip, but with
the textures it came to 7.27mb (there are 15.7mb of textures in the scene), so
I have included only the scene file, the hair plugin, and the face specularity
map (I will not release the other maps, this is included only so that you can
see the usage of the UVW Unwrap modifier).
        ANY and ALL suggestions on the image are very much appreciated; I am a
Pixar-hopeful highschooler :)

CREDIT:
Lindsay Sweetland for the extensive development of textures and models (over 17
years!), apologies for the crude reproduction (it doesn't do her justice).
Erich Sullivan for the use of his scanner

