Environmental Shots

Here is another couple of screenshots of my environment, that I have developed over time. Recently, the lighting has become rather bright with the over use of Omnis, a problem on my part due to the attempt to create some realistic volumetric lighting and neglecting to remove. To rectify this problem I removed most of the lights in the scenary and re-did most of the lighting. The responsive effect was inherently noticeable...

As you can see the shadows are not more prominent amongst the objects, and stands out clearly wth deeper shades for closed objects with a more intense lighting pattern and you can really see the bump mapping detail on the frontal colum and the depth of field in the back shadowing of other elements in the scene, such as the church.

Here is another screenshot I took and this allows me to actually discuss some of the choices I made during the creation of environment.

One thing I realised pretty quickly when starting to work on my environment was that it was a very small piece of a much larger system. Take a look at the map below to get a fundamental idea of what I am on about.

The environment is what I call a neverending environment, meaning closing the environment off is a difficult task to achieve, due to the large nature, it would have to be modelled pretty extensively. I knew I didn't have the time on my hands to add more buildingds an elements to the scene (I may after the show case to improve my grade) but understanding I focused on the main element of the scene, the Salts Building, this allows me to develop a scene for the showcase trailer rather than spending a whole lot of time focusing on the out areas, it also means that I can work on developing a more robust and phot-realistic buiilding as a opposed to less detailed buildings in order to be able to render in a set time.

With this I used a technique that is used in the industry, which simulates a much larger surrouding. Mostly older system to decrease polygon size. Its adding terrain ( or in mine mountains) in the background with some very simple modelling, the effect is the feeling of a larger environment as the seams are hidden the effect gives it distance and volume.  This effect has been used in games like Dragon Age, to make the environment seem like it doesn't just die.