Another challenge! Real or fake heart?

Some of you got stumped by the last challenge. This one isn't any easier.Is it a photograph, a 3D model, or digital art?It's actually a combination of using Photoshop and Maya (a 3D program). Done by Michael Bengtsson.Here's how he did it.

The technique is that I constructed the hole image in Photoshop first. That is...In different layers i painted up specular/ static shadow and highlight and so on to make sure that it fitted all together before I even started up Maya. This was done partly from using photographs and lots of cloning and then I also painted in some extra details.When I was finished with the Image I projected it on to a simple plane in Maya. The projects deadline didn't allow for good uv-mapping so working with projections was the obvious choice. After that I modeled the geometry...kind of like when you are doing image-based rendering. For this particular project I knew that I was never going to see the other side of the heart, therefore it was sufficient with modeling from on side, so I could don 180 sweep around it at least.The heart now looked great in a stillframe... but not in animation...it was to static. To make it look good in animation I also went in and constructed a displacement map/a bump map and a specularmap. The I used a selfconstructed hdri image to get the sharp reflections on the heart. An occlusionpass were also done to get the final touch during the animation sequence.