For our final project, we would like to simulate an image of a ladybug on a flower.  Here are two such images:

We chose this scene because we feel that images of nature are especially challenging to simulate.  While it is relatively simple to create plastic-looking flowers, making them look realistic and life-like is another story. 

The first challenge is to simulate the soft petals of the flower.  To achieve this, we would like to implement subsurface scattering.  We will be looking at the paper "Reflection from Layered Surfaces due to Subsurface Scattering" by Hanrahan and Krueger, Computer Graphics Proceedings, Annual Conference Series (1993), 165-174, as the model for our implementation.

Another challenge is the rendering of the yellow pollen of the flower.  We are looking at implementing texels to do this.  The following paper will be our main source of guidance:  "Rendering Fur with Three Dimensional Textures" by Kajiya and Kay, Computer Graphics 23, 3 (July 1989), 271-280.

The placement of some background plants beyond the focal plane of the camera (depth of field effect) will add to the realism of the scene.

Finally, if we have time, we all a ladybug or two to our scene.  To simulate the textured surface of the ladybug's body, we would like to implement bump mapping.