TITLE: Octopuses Garden (in the shade)
NAME: Bruce Johnson
COUNTRY: US
EMAIL: johnson@pharmacy.arizona.edu
TOPIC: Gardens
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: octogard.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Strata StudioPro

TOOLS USED: 
    Strata StudioPro 2.53, Clayscape (for head), Photoshop

RENDER TIME: 
    47 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    Mac 7600, 233mhz 604, 128 mb ram

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

The octopus sits in his garden, tending his anemone patch.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

Whew. I just got upgraded to SSP 2.53, and covered a lot of new stuff in this
one.

The idea popped into my head about three seconds after seeing the new topic in
the IRTC mailing list; maybe submitting it at last will get the damn song out
of my head!

The octopus head was modeled with Clayscape, a free program that's reminicent of
Amorphium, you model with it like pushing around electronic clay, lots of fun.

The arms are my first attempt at using SSP's IK plug in; each arm has eight
bones in it. It was fun, but there is a LOT of room for improvement.

I reused a few objects form my Water round entry, the shovel and bucket.

The Anemone's were done with SSP's hair plug in. My general impression of this
plug in is that it's horridly unruly, and not much good for _hair_ but for
tentacle-y things, it works ok. It's a massive memory hog, though.

Th octopus is glaring at a gaggle of clown-fish waiting to invade his garden,
they're off screen (translation: I never got them to look right, and adding
them croaked my machine...I need more memory!)

What's missing is my attempts to use haze to simulate 'underwater'; anopther
unruly plug-in I didn't master in time.

But I'm tired of this image now. Time to submit it and hope I at least place in
the upper half of the field ;-)


