This scene is a kind of test for a possible CryEngine 3 game project. It's my first attempt at using global illumination in a render.
I'd really like to get some of these assets into CE3, but for now I'm reliant on Softimage Mod Tool (as you can see from the amateurish watermarks!) - and, sadly, I can't seem to get the old CryExporter working with CE3. Hopefully I'll have time to learn some 3DS Max soon!
I've been doing some more experiments, cutting down on energy and colour intensity, but I can tell I've got a lot to learn.
A description of the scene:
I'm imagining that this little tableau is seen at night, lit by a single light-source (the table-lamp). I might expand it to include more of the room and some other odds and ends, in which case I might add another light or two, though I'd plan to maintain a sense of there being "islands" of brighter light in a generally dark space.
A few problems I've noticed:
- I think my objects are reflecting too much light on to the surrounding surfaces (i.e. the map is effectively back-lighting the bottle, the pages of the books look like they're glowing). If I reduce the "Radiance" settings on my objects' materials things start to look a bit more realistic.
- themodman101 validly criticised how "harsh" the light looks in the first set of images. That might have been sorted out somewhat by reducing the radiance (see point above), but I'm not actually sure how much less harsh I want the light to be, given the nature of the light source (a desk-lamp, quite near to the objects, with a fairly strong but narrow spread).
Comments/criticisms/suggestions/questions are welcome!
