Day 52 -- 3/8/2011

Pretty much started the day by trying out some lighting test. I asked Zack for some advice for lighting interior, like an enclosed room. I also showed him a reference which I might follow quite closely. Closely looking at the reference, he explained the setup to me. It looks like some ambient occlusion kind of feel and an area light, not casting shadow, acting like an key light on the object.

Okay, Zack suggested using environment light to light up the scene and an area light as a key light on the objects. Heeding his advice, I tried it out. However there's an issue. As my scene had a enclosed room, the environment dome light cant penetrate in. I thought of light link the shadow mask of the room away of the environment light. I was kind of struggling with this part as I didn't expect it to be that messy. It kind of work but don't know if it's the correct way of doing.

Next, I try out the finalized toon shader on the room wall. Using a spot-light to test reflection on the wall, give more variations and not flat at all. I also test out the reflection, like clear reflection and blurred reflection. For the wall without reflection, it looks totally flat, I will scraped the idea of making it non-reflective for the wall.

Next, I was playing with the reflection properties and did some test renders, clear and blurred reflections. The cleared reflection was too clear until the opposite wall could be seen. It was kind of distracting for the audience. For the blur, it was a little over blurred and need to adjust more, the noise was kind of noisy. So I need to strike a balance between the both of them.