Help me with this weirdness

[AJLynn]

I have no idea exactly how I did this. Or, rather, I know exactly how I did this but I don't know what it is. I know that under some circumstances (like this one, where I use a PBlurp to make some bent bar forms come apart and get a funky geometry) I can bring C4D files into Max and render them in VRay or Maxwell, and get this bizarre cool lens effect:

 

 

I accepted this as something that happens and have used it on occasion. But I can't figure out what it is, in the Max file, that makes this happen. As far as I can see, the rectangular pieces are all simple geometries and completely uninteresting - they just render as lenses.

 

Anybody care to have a poke at it? Here are the 3ds file and the Max8 file (set up for VRay now because the new Maxwell makes me want to bang my head against the wall, and I think I used an EGZ glass texture in there). I'd like to know what's actually going on so I can replicate it, and of course anybody who figures it out can feel free to use it

[Mat@MDI-Digital]

i quite like it