Detailed close-range renders of the Caracol

The flash movie below displays a collection of images, each rendered from the same source geometry with different levels of decimation and shading maps. Image one is a render of the full-resolution model (~377K polys) with a single map for RGB. The next images show renders of scenes with varying poly counts, adding normal and displacement maps to preserve high-frequency detail and edge quality. The rendering itself is done in Mental Ray, without special attention to lighting or sampling quality.