Totetiko zen garden

This is a 3d view of the smallest Japanese rock garden at the Ryogen-in temple: Totekiko.

The scene is being modelled with Blender and I've rendered this image with Octane until it reached 4000 samples per pixel.

The sand is modelled by applying a custom displacement map to a subdivided plane. I did the map with Inkscape (only gradients) in order to be able to modify the heights easily if wanted:

For the rocks I used this technique from Thomas Schloegl:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q_6hDWkZ-A

Verpan Spiral

Few days ago I saw the Verpan Spiral lamp on a shop and I thought it could be great to make one with Blender.

This is the first render of the lamp, made with Octane. I will try to make it with Cycles to test performance and noise levels and maybe with Yafaray to compare it  with a biased engine.