Comments

Rendered with depth=8, 16xAA. Scene uses bump and texture mapping. Bump mapping is primarily for water effects, but also for cardboard in the foreground (which turned out to be not very visible). Higher depths just make the scene brighter without adding to visible reflections. Also created an animation across recursion depths (from 0 to 10): https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~perelman/tmp/cse557trace/ (code to generate your own such animations at the link). Chrono Trigger (SNES) fanart of Chrono's "death" scene with the Chrono clone made of cardboard (partially to avoid making a model for Chrono, partially because it's amusing/thematic). Screenshot of scene this is based on at http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y169/Zyndram/snes/ChronoTrigger-Lavos1stform.jpg . Scene chosen because there's lots of water to show off reflection/refraction effects and bump mapping.

If you can't see the video, download it here or view a static rendering here.

Raytraced Video