First at all, let me introduce myself. I'm Gfamad (David IRL) and I live in France (so sorry for my bad English

) near a town called Lyon
I have since a long date a great interest for the UFO phenomen. I also know since about twenty years CGI: On Atari ST with GFA raytrace, On Amiga with Real 3D, and on PC with PovrAy, 3D Studio, 3DSmax, Lightwave, Cinema 4D..., and of course Blender ! But I'm only an amateur, because I'm really not an artist at all.
Three days ago I discovered the Drone story and I found it very impressive. I read many topic of this forum (and the FAQ, of course !) and I like the way you study the phenomen: The scientific way.
It's important for me to say that I really hope the drone phenomen is true because those photo are simply amazing.
But I'm gonna raise some strange points about some photo, and I hope you will find the way to destroy my doubt. Again, I'm not here to say those photo are fake. But I will bring what I know about CGI in order to (maybe) help you in your quest (understanding the drone phenomen).
Let's begin know !
-First at all, you speak a lot about radiosity. But you need to know that there are today some new rendering technic better than radiosity, they are called 'Unibiased render engine' and they are a great milestone in CGI. Those program can compute a picture wich will take time to render (in fact, the time is infinite, but you can stop the rendering process when you reach the quality you want) but you will obtain a photorealistic picture.
I give here 2 links for Indigo and Luxrender. Visit the gallery if you want to discover what they can do:
http://www.luxrender.net/http://www.indigorenderer.com/joomla/-Know, if you don't mind, I would like to speak about the Isaac photos. (And I sincerly hope you will say I'm wrong !!!)
When I saw those photo first, I said to myself 'Hey, some great render with AO' (ambiant occlusion). AO is a technic to create an ambient light that came from everywhere. It's the same effect that Radiosity (or Unbiased render technique) with a sky dome around.
This why to light the scene is easy to recognize because:
*There is no specular Highlight
*There is no preferred direction for the shadow.
When I look at the Issac photo, that's the first thing that hit me: No specific light, no specular point, and all seems white around.
If it's a real photograph, maybe you can help me to understand: Is it possible indoor to put light everywhere to have the same effect ? (ie no specularity). I understand how to make this in CGI, but not IRL. Surely I missed something ! (Outdoor, you could have this effect with no sun, and an uniform white sky...)
A last thing, about Chad photo (again, I'm not an expert photograph !), in fifth photo of Chad (scannedimage-4.jpg), is it logic that the UFO is sharp and the tree is...well less sharper ? (I'm not talking about the 'aliasing problem' on the spike !). Should'nt they have the same level of sharpness ?
That's the end. Sorry to have bother you with those problem, but I'm really interested about this phenomen, but there are so many hoaxer on the net that it's important to analyse before believing.
Thanks for your attention and I hope one day the truth about the drone will be known.
Gfamad