Title: Hangin' around
Name: Arno van der Heijden

About this entry:

1. A 2 pass radiosity setup was used.
2. The original ldraw model was slightly changed: the side walls are folded out and the position of the minifig is changed as well.
3. An ultra-wide-angle camera was used for a more dramatic effect.
4. The sensor beams are taken directly from Tim Gould's contribution (sorry, they were just too good).
5. A bump map was used to simulate rope.
6. The computer screen has an ambient value of 2.5 to simulate a glowing effect.
7. Focal blur is achieved through post-processing: A depth map is easily obtained with MegaPov, using the "PP_Depth" macro. Subsequently, you can use your favourite image editor to add the focal blur effect. Hereto a number of plugins are available. This is a VERY cheap way to add focal blur, as opposed to doing it directly in PovRay. Moreover, you can easily play around with the settings without having to wait for hours to see the effect.
8. Black bars were added with Paint Shop Pro. Some retouching on the minifig arm was done as well.

The image was rendered with MegaPov and took about 1 hour for the first pass (920 x 400) and 7 hours for the second pass (1380 x 600 + anti-aliasing 0.1). Overall, I'm really satisfied with the outcome. However, there's one thing that still annoys me to the bone: the unrealistic shape of the minifig head (and arms). Next time I will certainly replace these with parts from Anton Raves' library.