This model of the Centaurus engine used on the Shorts Shetland flying boat, among other aircraft, was modeled in Blender 2.49 but rendered in Blender 2.63 with the Cycles render engine. I used 4000 samples and it took 6 hours at a resolution, originally of 4000 x 4000 pixels. It has since been cropped down a bit. It is easier to model than you might think looking at the seemingly complex geometry. That is because the geometry is very straight-forward, The cylinders are radially arrayed at 30 degrees from each other and the two radial arrays of cylinders are similar but off set by 15 degrees from each other. There is a heck of a lot of symmetry going on, so you don't really have to do as much modelling as you might think!
