Gallery Page 3: Callandor

For those people who don't know: The fantasy author Robert Jordan has written an intertesting series of fantasy novels (he's up to 57 so far - or so it seems) entitled "The Wheel of Time". In the books, he describes a massive castle called the Stone of Tear (it's in the city of Tear). Deep within the castle is a hall called the Heart of the Stone, and in the hall is a crystal sword, rotating slowly in the air, called Callandor.

I have attempted to create the Heart of the Stone in Bryce. The features of my Bryce scene which I've tried to match to the book are: the sword Callandor, which I created from an imported and modified DXF file, is transparent, and glows slightly; there are a number of redstone columns; the wall lamps are gold with silver mountings; there is a hanging lamp suspended on a gold chain; and the hall is vaulted, with a dome in the centre, above the sword.

I know I'm not quite accurate in the following: the floor is dark and patterned, not light coloured; I don't have enough hanging lamps (the scene renders slowly enough as it is), the entire hall isn't as big as it ought to be, and no doubt there are a few more little things.

For more info on Robert Jordan and/or The Wheel of Time, take a look at Robert Jordan Fandom.

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Callandor This is my second rendering of the scene. I rendered it at 800x600, with spatial optimisation set to high and anti-aliasing set to standard. The render took about 69 hours, as you can see on the right. I'll be creating more views, but with the enormous render times, they won't be coming frequently. I re-rendered this in 2004, at 1024x768 resolution, with full anti-aliasing, and it took about 24 hours on my AMD Athlon XP 2800+.		Render Report on Callandor Two days, 21 hours, 5 minutes and 49 seconds. 4.54 quadrillion (i.e. 4 540 000 000 000 000) ray misses, and 3.35 trillion (3 350 000 000 000) intersect attempts.

Entrance to the Heart This is a rendering (30 hours) of the view of the Heart of the Stone, looking from an entrance at one end toward Callandor in the centre. You can see the lamps on the wall in top corners, the hanging lamps on a chain, and the curve of the dome above the sword.		The Crystal Blade Here's a nice close-up of Callandor floating in the air, from a ground-level camera angle. The sword casts enough light to make all the redstone pillars look orange. From here you can see the dome, but the lights at the passage entrances aren't visible behind the pillars. This one took 80 hours to render, with fine anti-aliasing off.