Doing Some Environment Test Renders

 

I'm currently in the process of modelling and texturing the environment that I plan to use in the short film for my assignment. While not everything is complete yet, I felt it was important to get some test renders done to make sure everything fit together nicely and the textures I had done so far are working properly. As you can probably notice in these renders, it looks somewhat different to the concept sketches from a few weeks ago. This is because I found that some of the models I originally planned to use either didn't work, or would take too long to texture so were swapped out in the interest of time management. Perhaps the biggest change so far is the wall texture. I had originally planned on putting in stars but when I was working on the texture in Krita, I realised it would take so much time drawing and perfecting all different size stars that I made a switch to clouds and was able to complete that much faster.

Another noticeable change from the concept art is that the middle drawer on this dresser is closed, but in the concept art, it's open. This is because I couldn't find a way that it would look when modelled that I would be completely happy with so I have put that idea on hold for now but if I have time before I need to begin rendering, then I will go back and try again. If however, I do not have time, I will still be able to follow the original storyboards with the ball falling down and knocking over the blocks as this minor change will not affect the over all narrative of the piece.

As I mentioned in previous posts, my main inspiration for the environment - and story as a whole is Toy Story and right now, there are a lot of very obvious nods to that on display including posters and even the duvet on the bed all of which I found through a Google Images search. I am hoping to change at least one of the posters on the wall to a piece of concept art I drew for one of the characters so that it ties in better as well as the duvet because in my mind having a Buzz Lightyear one when his character model isn't anywhere in the scene, doesn't make any sense to me - but they will do for now for placeholder images

Something else that I'm still trying to get right is the lighting. Right now all I have in there is some skydome lights and a spotlight under the bed to illuminate the character model that currently resides there. These lighting choices are far from final but were helpful in pointing out problem areas that I can focus on when I'm working on the final lighting let up.

This is also the first time I've brought all of the character models I made into the same scene. Up until now, they had been worked on in isolation in their own Maya files so seeing them all brought into the same scene is a huge step towards getting the project completed. In saying that though, I still have some textures to work on and some models to finish so I better get going on that!