The room has come together nicely, clockmender. But if you want to stay with the current depth of field you need to have higher resolution textures for the curtains, the carpet and the blanket on the bed. But that wouldn’t matter in the detail shot’s of the trains and the model railway because the depth of field should be reduced then. The background is too clear in #78, for example. Just my two cents 
How do I do this - is it with the camera settings and what should I use?
While I try various things with the camera - I may do a simple project to experiment, here is the final engine “Stromboli”
I am going to tone down the carpet, curtains, bed linen, etc. so it’s not quite as bright. 
Cheers, Clock.
OK, I think I have got it - something like this:
I set the boiler of Stromboli as the target and used Aperture -Radius at a value of 0.17 :).
Hattie appears to be slightly out of focus and the bed definitely is.
Cheers, Clock.
Today is not a sad day as again I have learnt something.
Cheers, Clock, you’ve been faster than me You could also use an empty as the target which is a bit more flexible, perhaps. The render and the DOF look great!
That’s an even better idea - I shall try this tomorrow.
Thanks again sir!
Cheers, Clock.
That’s the general effect I was originally thinking of. Looks good. Gives the feel of a train set in a kid’s room, without overpowering the train set.
Stromboli is a ripper. Looks rather volcanic and Italian. Also looks like it runs on whiskey, what with the keg up front. 
Thanks guys - I think I may add some more bits to the room to make it more convincing, but will guard against these objects overpowering the train layout.
Here’s my final (maybe…) train model “Horatio”, he does all the heavy lifting jobs on the layout. I have still to add some more details to him, but he’s all but finished - and rigged.
Cheers, Clock.
Now that’s an odd one. They’ve made the firebox and boiler pivot with the crane. That’s gotta be a first. 
Incidentally I’ve always thought Horatio is a rather odd name. Why would anyone name their son after the proportion of ladies of the night in the general population?
@Gumboots - ROFL :D:D:D:D - Admiral Nelson’s Parents would be proud of you!
On the matter or cranes having their boilers on the swinging frame, I rest my case: 
This is an example from Australia and there are many more here, again all in Australia, although most were made in the UK and there is one Bucyrus machine made in USA:
http://internationalsteam.co.uk/cranes/cranesaus.htm
Cheers, Clock.
PS. Your batsmen had a good day yesterday, despite Warner’s ego getting the better of him - I fear I may have to become Danish again, my ancestors were Danes who came to England during the fifth century raping, pillaging, looting and burning. In these more civilised days we generally limit ourselves to just two from that list of pastimes! 
Well there ya go. Hadn’t seen those before, not that I’ve paid much attention to cranes. It looks like the steam examples with swinging boilers aren’t self-propelled, and just use the boiler for powering the crane itself.
And what’s the technical difference between pillaging and looting? They seem to be synonyms, AFAICT.
your modeling is really amazing, but rendering needs more attention…by the way nice work
@Gumboots - there are examples of self propelled cranes with the boiler on top - one of the Craven models on the list is one such. But I have to admit, that the crane design is mine not Smallbrook’s and I am stretching things a little.
Here’s an overview of the left hand end of the layout so far:
To clarify your second question:
Pillaging: to strip a place ruthlessly of money or goods by open violence, normally by soldiers during an act of invasion. Of French origin (the French verb “piller”, which can also mean “to mistreat”). At the time the Danes where pillaging, the word was not in use, being coined around 1350, if my memory serves me well.
Looting: to take goods or money from a place, normally as an act of burglary or corruption by more than one individual. Of Hindi origin around 1770 - 1790, I am not sure of a more precise date.
If you burgle someone’s house they are not present at the crime, if you rob someone they are present at the crime, so the looting is really similar to burglary and pillaging similar to robbery.
So, yes they are similar in that goods are taken, but the level of violence and conditions of war/invasion/corruption vary. So we Danes (after yesterday’s cricket I am now Danish again), would pillage a town on the day we conquered it, and loot what was left later on, maybe on returning to our ships after “paying our respects” to another settlement. The important thing is that you can loot without violence, you cannot pillage without violence. The Americans are now probably the best looters around, still keeping the proud tradition of their distant ancestors alive every time the disadvantaged in their society have a riot, but it is also common in many other parts of the world, mainly during riots.
Hope this helps! But then again, you might have been winding me up and I fell for it again…:o
Cheers, Clock.
I can tell you’re having fun with this layout. I have a suspicion that the fun level is partly to do with the lack of UV mapping. UV mapping sux.
(/me is currently battling with UV mapping)
Congratulations on your change of nationality.
@majid - Thanks for the kind words, these renders so far are only 300 samples, I will do better ones once I am happy with the model. 
@Gumboots - Yes Mate - I’m loving it and there is quite a lot of UV mapping for all the materials with image textures and bump maps, so all the wood grain, concrete, tarmac, stone, carpet, curtains, bed cover, etc.
Let me know If you need any help with the UV stuff, after my Canberra project and this, I am stating to get the hang of it. Thanks must go to excellent tutelage from Witold and his Virtual Airplane Books. :yes:
I have also been busy - now I have a passenger bridge at Pilgrims Fiddle station, a water tank (really useful for an electric toy layout) and a stone boiler house for the engine shed. I am currently working on my engine driver - there will be more once I get him rigged, he looks a bit wooden just now. I am not using MakeHuman as all the people are caricatures.
Cheers, Clock.
PS. It seems England have forgotten how to bat or bowl in the days between Cardiff and Lords.:mad:
HI Clock
This is looking soooooooo nice and I am sure you are having fun (back to childhood days, playing with your trainset, wishing you had a lot more parts and pieces… ) The only thing with this is it could become an addiction as trainsets tend to do, not long from now it will be extending down the passage and into the kitchen…:evilgrin:
Keep it up, looking very good, just maybe the brick texture is a tad large.
Shaun
Hi Shaun, It is supposed to be stone, but I think I will scale the UV’s a bit and see if it looks better with the stones smaller.
Thanks for the kind words, Yes it is getting addictive…
Cheers, Clock.
So now Driver Firestone is rigged and posable and I have redone the boiler room, choosing another stone wall image. 
Cheers, Clock.
PS. These were 500 samples, but they are previews/screen grabs, not camera renders.
EDIT: @Gumboots - we’ll see you in the Davis Cup Semi-final in September where I might be English again… England 70 for 7 - PATHETIC!!!
103 all out - “England, du er patetisk , der hvor er den Viking blod i jer?”
Now and only now can you really begin to appreciate the pain, suffering and agony of being a South African cricket supporter, a team that spends its life capitulating and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. We really need a crying little round ball to put at the end of sentences like these.
Shaun
I think it’s time to put the horned hat on again and start swinging the axe!
Still there’s always football - oh no I forgot, the English are crap at that as well…
Back to Blender then, much more rewarding!
Cheers, Clock.
Well, I have no idea what that medieval danish-viking-norman-cricket-thing is all about but the last renders look great.