I've not done much today but I've added a rug in case anyone gets cold feet. It's bump mapped to look kind of coarse and fabricy, as when I was a wee tot we had a massive hand-weaved persian rug in the living room. I always remember it was very rough to sleep on.

The UV map is just a mishmash of internet textures and patterns as I have neither the time nor the patience to paint my own persian designs.

Testing some lighting.

After poring over several lighting books, I'm testing out some lighting in my interior scene. It's a lot harder than the theory makes out, so it's taking a while to accurately set up my lights how I have imagined.

Here is what I have done so far:

 

Added initial warm glows.

 

Added spotlights around lantern to imitate the candle lighting.

Added various lights around fireplace to imitate the glow the fire would cast, and added some slight fill lights around candelabra to strengthen the model.

Testing out OpticFX that failed to render, but at least I have a nice reflection and shadows from the lantern now.

Today I made a candelabra to sit on my fireplace, and practiced using some three point lighting to light it. I was reading the theory behind successfull 3PL in the book "Digital Lighting and Texturing" so thought I should put it in to practice.

Hello.

Hello, I am a silly fireplace and I am under production.

I'm still working on the UV's and the lighting, and it's not properly bump mapped yet but I thought I'd upload my progress of the last few hours.

My lovely mum bought me the Advance Maya Texturing and Lighting for easter, and I'm currently working my through some of the tutorials to better understand lighting and how it can totally change an image. She managed to find a brand new copy for £7 from a nice man on e-bay.

Have just worked through the Firepit tutorial in Chapter 2, and although there are a lot of funny tweaks to attributes I never knew existed it was really simple to get my firepit looking like it did in the book. I missed off some of the last parts of the tutorial simply because at this stage I'm not too bothered about animation, as my 3D scene is going to be just still photos anyway. Here's my attempt at firepit lighting, with the 3D models being supplied on the disc:

The paint effects and lighting settings I learned here are going to be incorporated in to lighting my lanterns, and my fireplace to provide a warm and flickering atmosphere.