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 ;)

