Just some random sorceress peeking in on her daughter. An easy trick to accomplish. Just put a water plane with Ripples and Wakes for Iray at a 90 degree angle and render the whole thing in two steps: first render only the sorceress with the light sources in place (and yes, those flames are squarepeg3d's 3D morphing flame...I just changed the color a bit in the Surfaces tab), and render the scene again without the sorceress while keeping the lights intact. Hop on over to Gimp and put them all together as layers. Use the eraser tool with low opacity and the fuzziest brush possible to gently erase as much of the center of the portal as you need to fit your image. Place the image at the bottom of the layer stack (at the "back" of the image, if you prefer) and boom. And no, I didn't create the image in the portal. That face of ultimate terror and soul-shriveling evil is actually my granddaughter. I made this for her but figured I'd share since others more noob-ish than I might appreciate a few tips and hints.