I was reviewing my old stalled scenes, and found these height_field gears. I don’t remember why I abandoned it some years ago, but I tought it was worth another quick try, as the subject is very appealing… I was planning a total remake with more realistic and varied gear shapes, but I’ve more than enough projects already… perhaps in the next sequel.
To render this scene I used POV-Ray 3.5, mainly due to strange artifacts when using focal blur or antialiasing in version 3.6 with this particular setup.
UPDATE 08/23/10
I’ve uploaded a zip file with a demo, as there were some requests for the sources of these images. I didn’t have the sources on good shape, so I’ve created a simple demo for the technical part, involving creating special heightfields for the gears shapes.
WIPS
