I have been using this snow leopard wallpaper image 
http://uneasysilence.com/media/2009/07/Rocks.jpg on my desktop at work (on a 
vista machine) for a few days, and it struck me that something about the 
image makes it look really 3D, as if it's really some pebbles sat just 
behind the glass of my monitor.

Anyway I wanted to devise a way of getting this effect in povray, so I did 
the obvious things: objects arranged close to the plane of the image, lots 
of focal blur, soft radiosity-lighting. But then I came up with an unusual 
idea:

I've illuminated the scene using a rectangle placed at the "position" of the 
screen. i.e. I've placed the camera where my eyes are in my usual seating 
position, and created a glowing (invisible) rectangle exactly covering the 
area where my monitor would be, with the objects just behind that. This 
glowing rectangle is meant to simulate lighting coming in from the office, 
as if the monitor is a window into another world. I could perhaps get a 
better effect with a gradient or even an HDR photo of myself from the 
monitor's point of view! But the simple light box has achieved a nice 
result.

So basically, aside from the blur, this image is what you'd see if these 
objects existed just behind the glass of your monitor, and were illuminated 
by light coming through your screen! The blur helps the illusion of depth, 
possibly just because it's a good depth cue, or maybe it's harder for your 
stereoscopic vision to judge the depth of a blurry shape, or something... 
not sure.

Anyway, I like the result and it seems to make quite nice wallpaper (though 
TBH I still prefer the pebbles photo).

The image took almost exactly 24 hours to render, thanks to the rather high 
quality radiosity & blur!

-- 
Tek
http://evilsuperbrain.com

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