It has been increasingly difficult to update my blog these past few weeks as I have been working primarily on my dissertation. The dissertation has come at the worst time of all, as it has been eating away at production time but once it is out of the way, I can dedicate all my time to the films.

I have attempted to improve the brightness of the shot, and when looking at my previous render it was incredibly dark.


And now increasing the intensity of the light on Ed, with some colour adjustment:

While having a break from my dissertation, I really wanted to give the night lighting for Polished Off a go, here's what I've got so far:

I am also working on SPLAY at the moment, so I will not neglect my commitments to completing the textures for the characters and the environment.

Currently I've been given the task of refining the lighting in the hospital room, but whilst having a break from this, I wanted to go back to the shot of Ed lying in his bed. Simon told me a way of achieving rim lighting entirely through the use of a ramp shader, and so I thought I would give it a go:

It has changed the look of Ed's skin completely - less harsh shadowing, and a soft rim light all over. I think as an initial test it isn't too bad, perhaps too bright and he is less prominent as a 3D element in the scene.

And now a test using ramp shaders on the cabinet and vase:


This is the current light set up for Ed within Maya:

I have started to work on the lighting of medium shot of Ed:


This is an absolutely awful first test render.

I haven't loaded most of the textures here, as I only wanted to experiment with the lighting first. I changed the colour of the tiling as I thought there was way too much white in the scene. It needs to be broken down.

Here I have added more texture and lights, softening the shadow. In Adobe After Effects I have adjusted the colours to give it a more warm look. Ed's skin is only a blinn shader at this point.

The textures of the machine finally applied. The occlusion render takes a while to render, so here I have used an old version (which explains the overlapping). More reflection, more warm adjustment in post. I don't like the brownish dirty colour here.

Here we go, seem to be getting somewhere. The lighting is working much better. Soft shadows and sharper spec and reflections on the bed posts and oxygen mask. I have changed Ed's skin to a slightly more tint of yellow and altering other texture attributes to get him look less luminous. More blue on wall.

White tiling, as Edgley requested. Not too bad, needs more texture and highlights, but doesn't swamp the scene with white. Render brightened in Photoshop.


...And finally, here I have lightened the side texture of the machine.

I am pleased with my progress, yet feel there is still much work to go to get this looking right. I have chosen this colour scheme as I felt that it would not be wise to drown everything out in white, however much the characters will stand out.

Improvement list:

• Add moles/freckles to Ed's skin.
• Slightly more texture added to the scene, i.e the bed pillow, sheet.
• Alter wall colour to a paler blue/turquoise.
• More work on the metal reflections and bump.
• Correct the shadowing on Ed's neck.
• More texture on the tiling.
• Overall, the lighting slightly brighter.

Jed is now 90% textured. Apart from the skin, the afro and the mouth. I have made a render of everything that has been done so far: