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.