When setting out writing this blog, I had hoped to
tackle production issues more or less in the order that they were
faced. However, I suppose that now is as good as ever to discuss the
rendering issues for the foyer.
The
first obvious issue is that the polygon count was ridiculous. This
always seemed to increase because I insisted on an ornamental style.
This goes for the arches, as well as the columns that held the walls
up. I could have made the Greek columns relatively simple, but
instead I went for the more complex Corinthian style columns. This
meant that I had to model all of the ornamental details at the
pedestal of the column.
But
I later discovered that the greatest challenge for rendering the
scenes in the foyer was the lighting. To be sure, as much as I
complained about my lack of skill with texturing, I have so much less
understanding of rendering and lighting. I've read books, and it all
seems straightforward, but I doubt that I've scratched the surface of
understanding this.
It
seemed obvious to me that I wanted a dark environment for "TheMusic of Erich Zann," since it was, at root, a horror story.
This seemed best achieved with low lit rooms. But in order to have a
low lit foyer, I decided to put lamps all over the room. Since I was
going for high quality, I determined that I would have each of the
physical lamps in the room represent a real light source. In the
earliest incarnations, this set had twenty or more lights. Of course,
this made render times blow up. I later tried to strategically
eliminate lights, as well as physical lamps in the foyer. In fact, at
the very end of production, it was one shot in this foyer set that I
must have rendered six different times, all with a ridiculous
lighting artifact that I didn't know how to solve. In the end, I just
sacrificed this shot, and included an inferior rendering of the shot.
(Those who watch carefully might see what was sacrificed.) Oh well.
In
the future, I would really like to study rendering a bit more, and
discover more tools and options for this task.
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