I decided to start a project with more of a story line, and was thinking back on
Stanislaw Lem's book "Cyberiad" as inspiration.  I melded that with the
sculpture, "The Thinker", and cogito ergo sum, and came up with this scene.

My robot, "Cogito", has been imprisoned on a planet in Lem's world and has been
contemplating his errors for so long that he has rusted in place and doesn't
even notice that the door is standing open.

The model for Cogito is completely parameterized (using dictionaries!) so I can
pose him however I want if I decide to let him get up from his stoop and escape.

I started modeling the rust using macros I created for modeling painted
surfaces, where the paint may show part of the underlying surface and has its
own surface texture independent of the object.  (This technique uses an
isosurface function for the object, and then extends that function with a paint
thickness function for the paint as a separate object.)  Since the rust had more
open space, the renders were expensive and I didn't like how they looked.

So, I started modeling the rusted areas using a pigment pattern applied to the
basic shape function to get the raised areas, and then using that same pigment
pattern in the object's texture{} to differentiate the base object texture from
the rust texture.  I used this on Cogito himself, all of the iron bars, the
chain, and the lock.

I also used the pigment_pattern approach to apply texture to the walls and the
stoop to model where the stone was wet from a leaky roof and the window opening.

The attached render is using a moderate anti-aliasing setting, which seems to
work fine given the rough nature of the scene surfaces, and is not using
radiosity.  (I will need a few long days to do that, so maybe later.)

-- Chris R

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