I am back with this thing!
 

Ok, finals are over, I graduated, and I can go back to working on fun stuff. The lighting of this thing is tricky, so I can use all the help I can get. I still need to work more on the architectural details, but since I am doing this to specifically learn more about lights, I couldn't wait until all the modelling was in place to get to the light part.

This looks pretty cool. What is the story behind the pic. I don't understand why the light is so bright. Are aliens landing in a spaceship outside? Or is it armaggedon? I like the feel of the architecture though. Very romanesque. Cool stuff.

Ehehehe, funny... the aliens landing!!! :)
No, I am trying to achieve a bit of an extreme sense of light, you know, a big cotnrast between a dark interior and a bright exterior.
The architecture is supposed to be a bit more gothic than romanesque. I used photos of a french church as reference.
Thanks for your feedback, I appreciate!

I love the stained glass windows. How are you achieving that effect? is it just a texture map? I got the exteme light thing but it could do with some tweaking there's something just not quite right about it. Maybe you could add some dust particles and a bit of light fog to it, that may help.

Looking good, keep it up
Alan

floor textures need a bit of work...nice tho :)

The stained glass windows were done with quite a bit of work, including having area lights both in front and behind them, having very high translucent and reflective value, and making them glow. The actual colors are a photograph of an actual rose window of a french cathedral.
Thank you very much for the comments on the quality of light and the floor. It is still in progress, so not nearly perfect, but your comments allow me to make a kind of "to-do list". Thank you!

Here is a new version. I think I am pretty much done with the modeling so I can get all my attention to lights and textures.

maybe it's finished?
 

I have fixed all the things I could think of. If anybody thinks there is more to do, I would appreciate, otherwise I will post it as finished work.

I agree with pure morning about the dust particles. they would be a good addition.
great work by the way.

I am only using area lights in this image, which doesn't have a "fog" parameter. Could you give me some suggestions on how to add the dust in other ways? It sounds like a very good idea, if only I knew how to do it...

particles will do it just fine, give them a high transparency and you could even put them in in post.

One thing i noticed: shouldnt the middle stained glass window be the same brightness as the other two... if not brighter? at the moment it looks like there are two major sources of light (if it's sunlight there shoud obviously only be one!) ;)

You say you are only using area lights... how come? you should use a directional light for the sun outside. And then use point lights and area lights (sparingly as the up the render times) to pick out details add shadows etc.

Also the scene is too dark. If there is such a huge volume of lught coming through that window then surely light would be bouncing around all over the place inside the room. So the celiing etc would all be brighter and there wouldnt be any really really black areas.

Hope this is helpful

Alan

Pure made a good point with doing the noise in post.

To do that, simply check that the Z pass is turned ON in your render Globals:)

Use that Z depth channel in combination with a VERY high frequency noise layer (or high enough to your liking) , and tweak from there:)

ragecgi, you lost me there! I enable the Z pass in the Globals, I got that, but then you say to combine it with a noise layer:????
Noise layer of what, where, when and how?

under rendr globals there is an option to do a z-depth pass (Only works with maya iff files)

And then you can z-comp them together with some noise in post production to achieve the look.

Alan

It depends. If he want it to look like someone took a photo, with all that light coming straight into to the camera lins, the shutter (I think its called in english?) have to a very short shutter time, or else the whole photo would be ruined. Short shutter time will make everything look dark. Try to take a photo outside, midsummer, with the sun behind the person you want too have a photo off, everything will be very dark even thou its really very bright when you see it.

Its hard to take a photo with just light from behind the thing you want to take a photo off and not get everything dark.

I think its looks real and kinda like a "bad" photo, and if the whole scene was brighter it would ruin the effect.

Sorry for my bad english, hope you guys understand what im trying to say anyway.