Rendering Competition Submission

Qi Ma & Jiayi Sun

The image captures an iceberg gradually transforming into urban skyscrapers within an hourglass, as well as the striking contrast of a stormy industrial scene outside and a tranquil wooden interior, embodying the concept of "in between"—a balance and transition between nature and modernization, the past and the future.

This image was rendered with 256 samples per pixel (spp) and processed with NL-means denoising for post-processing.

The hourglass frame uses the Disney BSDF to simulate the metallic material. The meshes for the iceberg, melting water, and urban buildings were modeled(mesh modeling), with image textures applied to simulate surface details.

The ice water droplets in the center of the hourglass were created using object instancing. The crane visible outside the window is illuminated using an environment map emitter, while the dark clouds are rendered using heterogeneous participating media. Additionally, directional light was used to provide extra illumination for the scene.

Resources for project scene:

• environment map: Sergej Majboroda@polyhaven
• urban buildings: Herminio Nieves@2013 city model
• iceberg: taobao
• cloud: openvdb
• hourglass: • Less •@sketchfab
• indoor scene blender: Wig42@Blendswap