Desktop; Twisted

Still no sign of my laptop, last week I was told the guy repairing it still hasn't gotten in contact with the people who gave him the motherboard last time. I have not heard anything since then so I have no idea when I'll be getting it back. In the mean time however, I have managed to get a 4 year old desktop from my friend. It is not exactly fast, but it is capable of doing what I want it to do until I get my laptop, and will be useful as a render farm node once I have my laptop. It has a 2.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4 with Hyper-Threading, 2GB of DDR-SDRAM PC-2700, an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200, and an 80GB 7,200RPM EIDE hard drive. So although I won't be doing any gaming, it is not much worse than my laptop, it is however good enough for SideFX Houdini 9.5. This brings me to my next subject, Twisted.

After I set the desktop up how I wanted it and installed the Windows 7 Beta, which I must add works very well and fast, I decided I'd install Houdini and mess around. I had a couple ideas, but most of them included dynamic simulations, which I didn't feel like using on this machine due to processor speed and memory constraints. So I just made a simple curve, copied it four times, rotating 90 degrees each time, added a PolyWire node to it, and subdivided it, which resulted in an interesting looking "sculpture". Once the model was finished, I gave it a silver material, and created a floor with a slightly modified cirrus marble material. I then set up my camera, added depth of field effects, and did some draft renders. Once I thought everything looked nice, I added an area light, and left my computer to render for five hours. The end result was what you see below.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/heydabop/3231694220

I am currently working on another scene with a similar base idea. From the picture I have in my head, the new one will look better and have more detail than this one. I cannot take all credit for the new one, because after discussing this current one with my friend, he gave me some ideas for the new one, which I hope will come out looking very nice.