The Fresnel Lens inside the Lighthouse.

Description: Inside the Lantern Room. This image depicts a Fourth Order
Fresnel Lens inside a Lighthouse. The lens was constructed by laying out a
curve in the shape of a cross section of the lens. The wavy brass supports
were also laid out using curves at this time, following the outline of the
shape of the glass. The glass curve was then lathed; the brass curve was
swept and beveled. The glass uses dielectric shading. The brass is CaliPhong
with a layer of bloom. Much of the scene was constructed from NURBS,
including the windowframes, the I beam supports for the floor grates, the
cast iron low wall, the handrails on the spiral stairs, and much of the roof
structure (not visible in this POV) The curved sections of the lens
surrounding the 'bullseye' are also of NURBS construction. The bullseye
itself was drawn in cross section with a curve, then lathed. Phil Emery's
ProTeam Architechture Course helped immensely in the construction of the
spiral staircase. Much use was made of the Normalize Location tool; using it
on the axes of objects made it a snap to keep things centered. An example
would be the floor grates, one was constructed and positioned, then the axis
was Normalized. Each copy was then easily rotated into position. The grates
themselves are an alpha mapped texture, derived from a photo I took of the
stairs inside the 1843 Eagle Harbor Lighthouse. The large toothed gear was
a collaboration with Kevin 'OpieJuan' Barnett; he constructed it using the
geargen.tsx. Lighting began with one of the trueSpace Light Library pre-sets,
it looked so good only minimal tweaking was needed. 477102 faces; 369266
verts, 26 MB Scene file size. Took "a long time" to render, but I think the
results were worth the wait. Earned an Honorable Mention in the August 2002
Caligari Contest.