EMAIL: chrfr@chrfr.de
NAME: Christian Froeschlin
TOPIC: Complexity
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Neural Net
COUNTRY: Germany
WEBPAGE: http://www.chrfr.de
RENDERER USED: Povray 3.6
TOOLS USED: The GIMP (JPG Conversion)
RENDER TIME: 30 minutes
HARDWARE USED: Pentium 4 2.6Ghz
IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

The human brain is one of the most complex structures in the known
universe, although it is composed of fairly simple processing units
which we share with even the most lowly insect. Complexity arises
from amassing about 100 billion neurons, each of which has a direct
connection to about 10.000 other neurons. Neurons fire electric
signals, stimulating connected neurons to fire as well.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED:

For obvious reasons, this net is not hand-modelled but generated by a macro
distributing neurons in a sphere and connecting them if they are close enough.
A meager 150 neurons (a fruit fly may have some 100.000) already generated
enough sphere_sweeps for my taste.

Note that the idea of "connecting" neurons is an idealization, real (biological)
neurons have "trees" of dendrites (input) and synapses (output), which are entwined
but not quite touching and use chemical notifications. But I really didn't want to
add a complex tree structure to every connection in the image ;)