Major Project: The Room - Lighting Tests #1

It's been a while since I worked with my Room using Arnold rather than Mental Ray. When I initially brought this model into Arnold several weeks ago I struggled to get it to look the way I wanted, most likely due to my lack of experience with Arnold and displacement/height maps at the time. Now that I have a better understanding of how everything works, I was able to get better results. I did have to remodel this room slightly, since the original geometry didn't seem to get along with the displacement's subdivision. I think I still want to tweak some things, but for the most part the room looks identical to the Mental Ray version.

I've begun experimenting more with Arnold's area lights. It was suggested to me to make the room feel more sterile and hospital-like, which I struggled to achieve because if the lights were too bright, my projections would be washed out and/or not visible. However, in my creative development showreel I used live-action footage and home videos alongside renders of my CG space. If I do this rather than projections (although I will still see how I could possibly work with projections and turning on/off lights), it gives me some more freedom to experiment with lighting.

So far I've worked mostly with the Arnold quad/cylinder lights since I feel they replicate the feeling of florescent lighting the best. I only worked with two lights in this scene for now, I can add more to further brighten up the room. I tried out different colours for my lights... some tests I worked with I made both lights being cool-toned, some had one that was warm and one that was cool, then some had two different cool-toned colours (ex. green and blue). I have not yet experimented with adding an atmosphere to this space, but I probably will to see what I could do with it. I really enjoy experimenting with lighting and I plan on doing more lighting, atmosphere, and colour tests.