[nathanm]

This guy is the grand wizard of the gradient mesh tool.  I have never seen anything like it.  Holy crap!

http://www.khulsey.com/masters_yukio_miyamoto.html

[gary]

That's absolutely insane. And it seems like it would be 1000X easier to create 3D models of the parts in CAD or blender or 3DS and then get a photo realistic rendering from ray tracing. Maybe I'm just thinking too much like an engineer?

[JakeJ]

Gradient Mesh Tool?

Man, that is some sort of photostratospheric terminology so far over my head that I feel like I'm sitting at the bottom of the Mariana Trench! 

[jqp]

Interesting - a trace of a photograph ends up being better than a photograph for illustrative purposes. Eye candy!

[nathanm]

This is a simple example of what a gradient mesh is.  It's a vector object that has colors assigned to nodes\points which blend into the base color of the object and other colors.  You can distort the "mesh" to create different shapes and add multiple colors.  It's like a technical, mathematical way to define what an airbrush does.  In the grey square I've added red, white, green and blue colors to each of the four nodes and then twisted them around.  You get a sort of 3D shading effect.

[WerTicus]

The result is pretty awesome, but its seriously difficult way to do it.  The 3d GR research speakers in my reel took a half day to make, plus another day to render the animation.

However 3d ray tracing has probably not been as capable as this method till 'recently'.