CAT RUSHMORE — ART & SOURCES

Current feline sculpture — V9
Rigged and animated Cat by JonasDichelle.
https://blendswap.com/blend/18519
License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
The static FBX was obtained from the public nrz/ylikuutio redistribution:
https://github.com/nrz/ylikuutio/tree/adcb264480542b2a6ca16cedbd1afecc605cb2d6/res/objects/www.blendswap.com/86110_rigged_and_animated_cat
The original bundled license, FBX and exact download hashes are preserved
with the selected modeling assets. No rig, animation, fur or textures are used.

Changes for Cat Rushmore: extracted and capped the domestic-cat head,
refined the ears and outer cheeks, closed the mouth with a compact sculpted
chin and paired whisker pads, shortened the muzzle, authored tapered almond
apertures and opaque stone eyes with recessed pupils, fitted the rear neck
into the cliff, and simplified the browser mesh.
The four heads keep the presidential relative positions and opaque granite
materials. The flying and walking cat uses its own reshaped copy of this
head (modeling/assets/avatar) on a body, paws, toe beans, tail and scarf
authored for Cat Rushmore, with its own skeleton and animations (the source's
rig and animations are not used). All shaping, rigging and animation scripts
are preserved with the source.

Historical feline sculpture — preserved V1–V8 assets
Adapted from Panthera spelaea, a reconstruction of a female cave lion,
by Joanna Kobierska. Lion base by Ken Barthelmey.
https://joanna_kobierska.artstation.com/
https://theartofken.com/
Source: https://www.blender.org/download/demo-files/
Download: https://download.blender.org/demo/splash/blender-5.2-splash.blend
License stated by the source: CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution).
The embedded source README does not specify a license version.
Creative Commons license information:
https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/

Changes for Cat Rushmore: extracted and posed the head, closed the jaw,
removed fur, whiskers, body and live eye shaders, baked and simplified the
mesh, and applied opaque granite materials. Repeated and arranged the
sculpture as four monumental carvings. Lifted the existing ear tips into a more pointed silhouette while keeping
the ear bases continuous with the skull. The refined version shortens and
raises the muzzle, broadens the cheeks and crown, enlarges the sculpted eye
openings and opaque eye shells, and shortens the lower face. The smaller
browser master is decimated again after these deformations. Detailed notes
are retained with the editable Blender assets. The monument compresses the
rear neck into the surrounding rock. The optional flying cat reuses the
attributed head with a simple authored body, paws and tail.
V6 further softens crown/brow ridges, rounds the cheeks, shortens the nose
bridge and adds shallow opaque stone pupil recesses. The browser derivative
uses roughly 90,000 head triangles. During assembly a small inherited
outer-ear opening is closed. The neck remains mostly buried in the facade.
V7 further softens nasal and upper-muzzle creases, aligns the group to the
presidents' relative positions in the user's photograph, and embeds the
rear necks in overlapping authored granite with narrow frontal recesses.
V8 relaxes narrow forehead/bridge pinches and reshapes the existing stone
pupil recesses into tapered slits, preserving topology and the V7 arrangement.
The later portrait-form pass gives Washington broader cheeks, Jefferson a
narrower face and taller crown, Roosevelt a compact crown, and Lincoln a
broader lower side-jaw. Central facial features and the lower rear neck remain
unchanged; the four forms use the same attributed feline source.

The source artist also credits this skull reference:
Crâne de lion des Cavernes, Grottes d’Azé, 71
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/crane-de-lion-des-cavernes-grottes-daze-71-30f635acd9a54d06b93119ff84801406

Terrain
Mount Rushmore bare-earth elevation data from USGS 3DEP.
Original Product Resolution SD_BlackHills_D23, tiles 13TFJ230590 and
13TFJ240590. Acquired 2023; 0.25 m source data resampled to 0.5 m near the monument and 2 m farther out.
USGS provides these data free and without use restrictions:
https://www.usgs.gov/3dep-product-news
Coordinates use NAD83(2011)/UTM 13N and NAVD88 metres. The scene translates
and rotates the terrain into local coordinates. The original facial region
is locally reshaped into a continuous sloped facade to accommodate the cats.
Narrow height spikes on steep faces are smoothed; local relief from the
survey is retained in the carved core, with an authored talus apron below
the carvings. The model simplifies the mesh away
from the monument and adds artistic surface details and vegetation.
A bare-earth elevation grid cannot reproduce carved overhangs faithfully.
The surrounding hills use a preserved 10 km USGS 3DEP Bare Earth DEM
ImageServer export, sampled at 10 m in local coordinates and blended with
the detailed survey in their overlap. The local square spans 7 km. Both
sources use NAVD88 heights and the same project offset. Exact source files,
hashes, service responses and preparation scripts are saved locally.
https://elevation.nationalmap.gov/arcgis/rest/services/3DEPElevation/ImageServer

Granite surface
Rock 01 by Rob Tuytel / Poly Haven. CC0.
https://polyhaven.com/a/rock_01
https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
The 1K OpenGL normal map is embedded in the model; roughness is constant.
The original CC0 color map and earlier generated textures remain preserved.
V6 uses two AI-generated granite color textures made with the built-in
ImageGen tool on 2026-09-16: fine carved stone and more weathered bedrock.
Exact prompts and original PNGs are saved with the project assets.

Conifers
Pine Tree 01 by Rico Cilliers and Rob Tuytel,
Poly Haven. CC0. https://polyhaven.com/a/pine_tree_01
https://polyhaven.com/license
Three original variants were rendered into transparent side and top views,
arranged as crossed cards, and instanced in irregular stands across the landscape.
The source model, maps, baked sprites and bake script are retained locally.
Ten trees near the flight route use a simplified volumetric derivative of
the same source, replacing their cards at the original positions. The two
shared mesh parts and five compact maps are preserved with a rebuild recipe.
The mature crown proportions are adapted from the source. These are generic
pine representations, not a botanical reconstruction of the Black Hills.
Earlier Fir Sapling sources are retained with the V5 checkpoint.
Far hills use an authored canopy color texture generated with the built-in
ImageGen tool on 2026-09-26, replacing the coarser 2026-09-16 texture. It is
not surveyed aerial imagery; both exact prompts and original PNGs are saved
alongside the regional terrain assets. Repetition remains visible close up.

Software
Blender: https://www.blender.org/
Three.js: https://threejs.org/ (MIT)
Lucide icons, including the tab icon: https://lucide.dev/ (ISC)
Draco geometry decoder by Google: Apache License 2.0.
The bundled decoder license is available at /draco/LICENSE.txt.

Landscape reference photographs
Carol M. Highsmith / Library of Congress:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aerial_view_of_Mount_Rushmore,_South_Dakota_LCCN2010630618.jpg
jeshua.nace / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aerial_view_of_Mount_Rushmore.jpg
These photographs guided the composition and are not used as textures.
The user supplied an additional frontal Mount Rushmore photograph on
2026-09-16 to guide the V7 arrangement. Photographer/license not supplied;
it is retained as a local reference and is not used as a texture.

Memorial site and placement
The terrace, amphitheater, Avenue of Flags, buildings and footways, and the
positions of the carved faces, follow OpenStreetMap data,
(c) OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0: https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
Placement was checked against the USDA NAIP 2022 orthophoto (public domain)
and the USGS 3DEP lidar elevation data used for the terrain; the orthophoto
is not used as a texture. The 56 cat flags and the terrace paving are
original textures generated for this project.
A Google Street View screenshot from Grand View Terrace (July 2013), supplied
by the user, and Wikimedia Commons photographs (listed in
references/memorial/photos/ATTRIBUTION.md) guided the comparison; they are
not redistributed or used as textures.

This is an artistic reinterpretation. Cat sculpture placement, exposed
rock details, vegetation and lighting are authored for the scene.