Along some B5, Farscape and BSG maratons of the recent years, I've become
interested in developing all kinds of alien life forms of my own as well. =)

The character I'm showing here is modelled in TopMod and has 7 separate objects
that I've then combined in POV. Rendering is done in the latest RC of POV beta.

This is also one of my first experiments with SSLT. That in addition to
radiosity, area light and focal blur camera it surely took some time with my
Phenom II x4 925. Total rendering time was 07h 06min 08s.

I'm still trying to find ways to make the render go a bit faster yet not to lose
much in quality. But if anyone notices any complete oddities in my
global_settings, light_source or camera (for me it's been a lot of trial and
error), I'd appreciate all kinds of advices and tips & tricks. =)

global_settings {
  ambient_light color rgb <1, 1, 1>
  assumed_gamma 1.0
  max_trace_level 5
  radiosity {
            brightness 0.85
            recursion_limit 1
            pretrace_start  0.08
            pretrace_end    0.01
            count           150
            error_bound     0.05
         nearest_count 10
         normal on
         media on
         always_sample off
      }
      subsurface { radiosity on }
      mm_per_unit 20
}

light_source {
  <0,0,0>
  color rgb 1.0
  area_light
  <-20, 0, -20> <20, 0, 20>
  3, 3
  adaptive 1
  jitter
  circular
  orient
  translate <0, 20, -20>
}

camera {
  location  <0, -1, -11>
  look_at   <0, -1, 0>
  right x*image_width/image_height
  focal_point <0, 0, -1.475>
  aperture 0.35
  blur_samples 5, 25
  confidence 0.9
  variance 1/100
}

As with any remarkably higher max_trace_level, count or blur_samples or smaller
variance the render time slows down to the ground and can take up to 16-20 hours
or even more depending on settings, so it'd be just excellent to be able to work
around it to have even a bit more sensible times for my scenes to come.

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