Hi,

For those that are interested I have attached the final version of my Rock The
Boat image.

Although I worked on damage macros for several days over a period of weeks, I
did not use them in the end. After I gave the rock rounded edges as the first
step before applying localized damage, I decided the image is actually fine
without the damage. Given that the stickmen are abstract and that overall the
modeling is fairly basic, I think the added realism associated with the damage
to the rock structure would look out of place.

There are two more parts of the scene where I spent far more effort than one
would guess by just looking at the image. There are a couple of hunderd lines
(mostly functions) used to generate the wake waves. The challenge there was
that the wake had to be assymetrical in order to look okay, given the different
location of the ship's center at the front and at the rear. Despite its
assymetry, the wake waves should of course still match up behind the ship.
Well, they do, however, this is not visible due to the foam trail that I added
later, and also because for aesthetic reasons, the amplitude of the waves die
out quickly away from the main wake shape. Ah well....

The second modelling effort that's not really visible is the texture of the
rock. It meets up at the center of the boat, adding weight to the suggestion
that there's a corner there. It is a bit of a hidden gem in the scene, which I
don't regret spending time on it. But then again, I also enjoyed the other
modelling excercises, even though they were mostly in vain if you only judge
by the final image.

Anyway, I doubt that I'm the only one who spent a lot of time on a particular
aspect of a scene, only to find out that in the end it barely improves the end
result... But that's all part of the fun, right? :-)

Thanks again to Chris Barlett for making the rope macro available. Without it,
the rope definitely would not have looked as good. Other than that, I have
modelled everything pretty much from scratch for this scene.

Cheers,
Erwin

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