Yes, *this* is the image that took 9 hours and 45 minutes to render. Not 
the other one I posted (which took a long old while, but less than 1 hour).

Why did it take so long? The answer is the water; it's an isosurface. It 
has a max_gradient of 1.07, but the function that describes it is 
extremely complicated and thus takes one hell of a long time to 
evaluate. What *is* this function, exactly?

Well, it's 160 splash functions added together. (!)

Each "splash function" is actually just some concentric rings of sine 
waves, decaying exponentially as you move away from the center. Each of 
the 160 splash functions has a different center point; the center points 
trace the outline of the stone block. In this way, the waves appear to 
follow the outline of the stone block, the way *real* water would move.

Of course, this only works if you have enough splashes; otherwise you 
just get more or less random-looking interference patterns. (It appears 
the number of splashes on each edge must be approximately the same as 
the frequency of the waves - which would make sense I guess! Thus, the 
smaller the ripples are, the more functions you must have.)

Go on, admit it... it *does* look kinda cool. ;-)

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