Onto Bigger and Better Things...

Author of Post: Captain Rara

I can honestly say that I've officially graduated college. My diploma arrived in the mail about a week ago and now I'm officially living in the real world. My summer class had me doing about five different projects. However, they didn't actually pan out quite the way I had imagined. Initially, I had been really excited about the prospect of creating a lot of new portfolio work. Yet as the summer progressed it became apparent that I would end up focusing on just a one or two different projects.

Project 1: The Fruit Bowl Lighting Challenge from 3D render. [Fruit Bowl Rant / Lighting Process and Final Render]

Project 2: Grunge Bathroom. [A project that had started way back in February and has recently just ended. Rant/Issues/Problems will be discussed below.]

Although, I probably could have gotten another one of the other original discussed projects done; I sort of ran into a whole other completely different project. I had some how managed to become a freelance artist through the process of the summer. Under contract from a start up called SCI (or Smooth Curves Interactive); I got the opportunity to create art for mobile games. 

Currently, I've been working on 3 different projects for SCI: Muzicube, ZombyPop, and an Unannounced Project. 

Muzicube Icons

ZombyPop!

Unannounced SCI Project

Current 
Projects

Unannounced SCI Project

Each project has had it's own individual challenges. Ranging from teaching myself pixel art to making low poly character models, these newer projects are something that I've never really had the chance to do. Everything abut each project is something new, we~ll except the unannounced one. My skills in texturing are put back to use in creating these rusted/old/worn/used keys.

But, I digress. Seriously digress. 

Grunge Bathroom! (The Return)
Until I can find an animator who may be willing to help animate the camera for me, Grunge Bathroom is hence forth done. Check out my failed attempt to slightly create an animation.

It's short. I get that. But it took nearly 10 hours for my computer to render that scene. The entire scene is incredibly high poly, and my render settings are probably not helping. While the original idea of using high poly models seemed like a good idea at the time; that decision may have come back to haunt us. 

The majority of my work was focused on the lighting of grunge bathroom. To call this scene a challenge would be an understatement. To be honest, I really hadn't though it would be too big of a challenge, but I was proven wrong. Most of my projects have had an off-screen light source or indirect light which is usually from outside. Because of those facts, I spent a good while on just the lighting because I had never really just lit an indoor scene. I found myself looking up grungy looking bathrooms or incredibly horrible tacky fluorescent lit rooms that make you want to cringe.

I had issues with the scene just being too neutral in color or it was just a bit too dark and a bit too hard to see in general.

Earlier Attempts:

 Things weren't just working quite right.

I probably restarted the lighting about five or six times. In the end, I decided to focus the light in one particular area. And ended getting the final result as shown below.  ↓

Final Stylized Version

I ended up stylizing the scene a tinge -- a lot. But I like the final result. The previous post had an even more stylized version of the dust particles floating around. But based on some anonymous critiques, I decided to take out the dust. It was distracting and took too much away from the scene.

Lighting Layout:

As also mentioned in the previous post, I attempted to learn how to use Mental Ray lights. To an extent I understand them yet they're still something I've yet to truly understand. I'm not even going to get into that discussion. =|

So I think I'm winding down on this post. Oh! Although a little late, I meant to attach the lighting layout for the Fruit Bowl Challenge but totally forgot. So--

Here it is!

I'll also edit the final Fruit Bowl Lighting Challenge post and attach this. =]

Cheers!