This is the original lighting from the "Constructing" Scene. There are far too many dark shadows for it to emulate a "happy/excited" state of mind. The lighting in the centre with theglowing bulb is far too intense and the floor and dust sheet are too dark. The research into natural sunlight and how it falls across an interior space really helped me pick this apart because it's way more obvious now than it ever was.
Got an image plane for the outside of the window so it's not just a blue environment. The lighting on the ceiling is still too intense but the shading going on around the floor and dust sheet is better. I still think the shadows in the corners are too dark though. The light intensity cast through the window from the spotlamp creates a nice light on the dust sheet on the floor.
Trying to get some shadows going from the sunlight coming in the window. These are too soft to really be representative of the type of shadows cast from sunlight which tend to have much crisper edges when in the direct path. These look more like shadows from a bounced light. Took out the light source coming from the bulb, as if the room is brimming with sunlight, the bulb wouldn't be on anyway. Applied a simple glass shader to the bare bulb.
Oops. Increased the intensity of the volume light far too much.
After decreasing the intensity I've lost all my shadows and I've got this weird line of brightness going around the middle of my scene :/
Decreased the intensity again but now it's too dull and I still have that annoying line in the middle. Aso now got a circular light shape casting on the door which I don't want...
Got my shadows back on, casting from the main volume light in the center of the room. But the shadows are too dark and are going in the wrong direction I want them to.
Took shadows off from the main volume light and tried to cast them from a directional light which had it's intensity set to 0. This had no effect..... I also now have a weird falloff shape from the spotlamp coming in the window to simulate sunlight, this is because I changed the angle slightly. Increasing the penumbra angle should sort this out.
Ok so went back to having th shadows cast from the main volume light in the scene, but again the shadows are going in all sorts of different directions and are too dark. Changed the angle of the sunlight spotlamp so some of the intense light cast through the window would fall onto the floor, as it looked like it was lining up with the dust sheet too much earlier.
Changed the shadow colour. This tone looks a bit better, but in terms of conveying the happy/expectant/excited frame of mind of the character's painting this nursary, having big long looming shadows doesn't really do well to show this. So the need to look less threatening.
Softened the raytraced shadows by increasing the light radius, and brought the tone up again. Moved the volume light nearer the window to get the shadows casting the way I want, but the ladder still has a really distracting, looming shadow. And the shadow cast from the ceiling light is too crisp for a shadow cast in that direction from natural sunlight. The "sun's" rays are aimed in at an angle towards the floor so any shadows cast on the ceiling would be secondary due to light bouncing off the surfaces, and not nearly as dark or as clear as that.
Moved the shadow casting volume light higher to make the shadows cast downwards and create a less threatening "loomy" shadow. However moving the volume light around to get the shadows right means I'm now getting much darker areas away from the window, and the contrast is too great from one side of the room to the other to be consistent with natural sunlight, and does nothing to illustrate the themes and state of mind I'm trying to show. I also now have this annoying light at the ceiling near the window due to moving the volume light up. If I duplicate the volume light in this position and have the duplicate only casting shadows, while moving the original volume light down and in nearer the middle of the room and turning shadows off, this MIGHT just fix the issue...
Yeah so that didn't work at all....I went in and rendered it again after unchecking the "emit ambient" box on the shadow casting light on the offchance it was doing something silly...noopeee...
Increased intensity to 700 on second volume light in hopes this would make the shadows work. Every other setting is the same from the other volume light when the shadows were working so I don't really understand why it's decided to not cast the shadows now..... It does however create a better lightcast on the white "reflective" crib box. (reflective as in that the tone white reflects light, not that the material or texture are reflective." But the intensity of the light means I have again got this weird glow on my ceiling.
Turns out the two volume lights were sorta canceling each other out and they both need to be emitting ambience and shadows for it to work at all. At least that's my understanding of it..
Now the shadows are casting thanks to the two volume lights. But now I have a weird light thing going on near the ladder shadow at the back right hand corner...
Ok. I think this is coming along a lot better. The shadows are casting in a much better colour and they aren't as oppressive or threatening as before. The volume light nearer the window is casting a good level of intensity on the white cardboard box, which thanks to my day of running around the flat snapping up photos of sunlight interacting with materials and textures, looks to be alright. The light it's casting on the ceiling is diffusing nicely across in tandem with the light direction and sun rays. A few more tweaks should do it. (hopefully)
Rendering out in a HD format, so I can then scale the render down and get rid of any imperfections as an anti-aliasing trick.
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