Sergey and Edward rendered this fantastic picture of the Eagle Nebula. They used volumetric photon mapping with multiple scattering in a non-homogeneous medium to simulate the emissive properties of the nebula.
Matthew experimented with different techniques for rendering tiger's eye gems. His investigation focused primarily on simulating the chatoyancy effect, which causes a characteristic band of reflected light due to aligned grooves in the gem.
David and Simon devised a procedural algorithm for creating physically accurate soap bubble clusters. They also implemented thin-film interference to simulate the color variation across the bubbles' surface.
Derek and Young Min extended PBRT's shape system to include a micro-structure layer of fractally grown spherical pores. Although they were originally interested in modeling porous foods such as cake, they found their system was also capable of generating convincing stone and concrete.
Zinnia and Peter implemented single and multiple subsurface scattering to produce this image of ShiShi, a mythical lion often placed in front of palaces, temples, government offices, and home entrances in China.
Nikhil investigated multi-layer and single thin-film interference to model the iridescence of pearls. In the image at left, the pearl on the left has no interference component and the pearl on the right is rendered using single thin-film interference.
Yi-ting implemented a new material class and modified the photon mapping integrator to produce this image of a horse made of photosensitive glass. The absorption properties of the material are procedurally generated by modified Perlin noise functions.
Omar modeled some of the interesting properties of ice including birefringence (multiple indices of refraction for one material) and the quasi-liquid layer (a thin layer of semi-structured water molecules) to create this image of icicles.
Robert extended the photon mapping integrator to allow volumetric caustic effects such as the bright ray seen in the shadow of the sphere in this image.
Gennadiy implemented a root finding method to allow algebraic surfaces (surfaces that can be described by an equation of the form p(x,y,z) = 0 where p(x,y,z) is a polynomial function) to be rendered by PBRT. The surface shown in the image at left is called the 'kiss surface.'
Isabelle implemented subsurface scattering to create the image at left. Notice the bright ring around the edges of the cube where the optical distance is shortest.