The main focus of this was originally to work on my lighting skills. It’s a review of the basics of art, warm and cool colours =) Overall I think it turned out pretty well =P I then tried my hand on post processing them, did a few weird experiments
The general figures, started a few hours ago (watched Monsters Inc while rendering tho =P), it has 7 lamps (one buffer spot for halo, two soft rectangle shadows for the walls, one soft shadow outside for variation inside, 3 in the candle for the translucency and general candleness =P) and all the modelling was quick and simple as this was all lighting. OSA set to 16, all ray based shadows set to 13, and amb occ set to 13. Took quite a while to render on a machine playing Monsters Inc at the same time lol =) btw, the glow around the candle isn’t post pro, it’s just a halo, great for spherical stuff =P
PS. I called it “Remnants of the Spanish Inquisition” because I didn’t know what to call it, and I asked a friend (obsessed with history) and he blurted out “Remnants of the Spanish Inquisition” =) So there you go, with all cough art cough comes some sad story =P
Prismatic - This is certainly not Yafray, can tell you that =P
I spent quite a while working on the scene’s lighting (obviously, lighting test lol)
To get the volumetric halo I used a buffered spotlight (still isn’t implemented in raytraced lights) for the lighting effect and the splash on the floor, and infront of that (at the front of the window) I put a large area light to vary the lighting around the room abit more and create large distorted shadows. Then I had two rectangular area shadows on each wall to give a reflected light feel, and finally put on ambient occlusion as Subtract at a pretty high power.
Also, I originally had the walls open at the back where the camera is, but that made it lighter as it got to the sides of the image (didn’t look good), so I had to create a smaller hole for the camera to fit into lol, just edge cut and faced.
Hope that helps =P
PS. Make sure you use the Distance button with area lamps correctly, I had the wall area lamps set to 0.137 or something, and forgot to set Distance, and the scene blew out and looked like it was under halogen lamps lol
Dittohead - The main theme was essentially the contrasting between the two, and yes, was very “sparse” =) I tried adding an easel, but it wrecked the composition of the image, and what kind of crazy artist would paint in the dark lol
dante - Yeah, I think that’s an aftereffect of a badly placed area light outside the window, shrugs it was always going to be a little confusing emulating that sort of light… Thanx for the comment =)
I’ve been pondering this scene, and I guess that what trips me on it is the unexplained polygon-shaped light artifact on the wall directly behind the candle. It also seems to me that the light from the window should be slightly dimmer, and cooler (more blue).
I also probably would have cropped this photo fairly heavily on the left side.