Attached Link: Where Dreams are Spun

Ok... I'm finally done with my Cave of Verdie Challenge. For the record, it took 8 days, 15 hours, 58 minutes, and 9 seconds of processor time on my G4 Power Mac to finish. 3.06 trillion rays. I only wish that so much of that wasn't lost in my size reduction. The 4000 x 3000 pixel version looks absolutely awesome. As per Verdie's instructions, I was trying to expand upon her original Cave pictures. I wanted to maintain my style (overly-stylized semi-realism) while at the same time incorporating Dreamspinners (vivid color and geometrically influenced abstracts). This is what I came up with. Most of the stalagmites is using a very flat simplified stone texture. They are also smoothed over a lot more than would occur in real life. The stalagtites are much more angular and use a highly reflective, highly refractive dark and yet still transparent glass (very similar to what I used for the hand of god in the Judgement of Angel). I really want to point these out, because unless you look closelyt, they are kinda lost in the picture. I suspect this is one of the two things that made it take so long. The other thing that I think took a while are the crystals. And much like the stalagtites, I think they're very sublte. If you look in the center of the lagoon, you'll see a bunch of green glass textures that I tried to model after the things in the fortress of solitude from the Superman movies. The lattice I think kinda makes the picture. I think its kinda definative of merging me and Verdie's styles. I was trying to go for very geometric like she does but highly stylized like my stuff. I hope it came across well. For those who care, it isn't made from a transmap, its a network of very thin interlocking tori (toruses). Well that's my overdrawn analysis of my own work. I really want to know what everyone else thinks.