TITLE: A rare occasion
NAME: Jeremy Bengtson
COUNTRY: U.S.A
EMAIL: spifferific@zdnetonebox.com
TOPIC: Spiders and insects
COPYRIGHT: ISUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT
JPGFILE: spikes.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Truespace internal renderer

TOOLS USED: 
    Truespace 4.3, Jasc Paintshop pro 5

RENDER TIME: 
    10 min

HARDWARE USED: 
    Compaq Presario, 700 Mhz AMD Athalon w/MMX and 3DNOW, 64 MB RAM,
8MB NVIDIA 
               VANTA LT.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 
    Deep in the woods lays a bug so fierce, few live to tell the
tale of the encounter. This bug is know only as a SPIKE. It is thought that
more than one type of spike exist, few have escaped, with most limbs attached,
the most commonly seen spike: the Spike Soldier. The Spike Solider is like most
Spikes, a slug like creature with scaly skin, odd cylindrical "birthing tubes"
protruding from its back, and a spider like face with manipulating mandibles
near its mouth. The only thing different from the Spike Soldier from the rest
is its fierocity, large horns on its head, and hyper-enlarged non manipulating
mandibles attached to a poison gland. I saw this and more late one night. First
all that I knew was that a deep bellowing was comming from somewhere ahead of
me. Then I burst out of the glade to find a Rare Bronze Drake, perched on top
of a just as rare "Magic Mushroom", surrounded by the ultra rare Spikes. To say
the least this was a rare occasion. I just about had seen enough when I noticed
the Drake had a Spike in its claws and then it all came together in my mind.
The drake was hungry, saw the spike and before it knew what it had done landed
on the mushroom got stuck ( the Magic Mushroom tends to secreet a sticky
substance the Spikes love to eat), started bellowing for its clan ( Drakes
travel in family groups called clans) and before long the rest of the Patrol of
Spikes found him, then I broke into the glade. Then I ran, I ran and ran, got
home, closed and locked the door and tried to forget the incident, but
couldn't. So I raytraced it and sent it out for the world to see what I saw the
rarest thing in the world.

HOW IT WAS MADE:
 TRUESPACE: Modeled spike(booleans/extrusion/IK), mushroom, and forest.
internaly Rendered
            The modeling in this pic was the easy part but I'm not sure how
exactly the                 whole scene came together except that I just placed
thingsand the scene just                grew.
 PHOTOSHOP: Spike texture, dragon eye, adding name
            Paintshops layers and effects tools came in so handy that I like it
better that 
            Adobes Photoshop
 Spatch : Dragon modeling
          Spatche is the 2nd 3D tool that I've ever used (first being Moray in
1998) and is           so good that I wish there was a whole suit of tools like
it ( that would be cool) 
NOTE: This is my last Truespace pic because my new computer dislikes it. I will
use       Blender(www.blender.nl) and BMRT(www.exluna.com\BMRT) for a while
now. Any questions       on TS I most likly can answer. (I feel I've masterd it
so I'm moving on too)(e-mail       address at top).

CREDITS: Spike Soldier illustration (from the Magic card)by: Randy Elliot 
           my main source of info on the Spike Soldier, just wanted people to
know