Midterm Proposal

For the midterm, I decided I wanted to create a scene that included a wizard's staff that glows, showing off its magical potential.  Afterwards, add to the scene to make it more visually appealing in general.

The staff itself is rather simple, a gemstone-shaped object fitted into the top of a gnarled staff, with an iron cap on the bottom for safety reasons.  One of the biggest parts of this project was getting the gemstone to look adequate in terms of overall color balance, reflectivity, and translucence; as seen in the previous blog post.  Once that was satisfactory, and the basic surroundings were set up, I added a red point light to the center of the gem, key framed to quickly flash twice during the animation, and then went back to the gem's material to add incandescence at the appropriate times, seen below.

I added the iron cap after my initial presentation, which just consisted of creating a curve and revolving it, then spending some time to line it up with the staff, and finally trimming the once meandering tail of the staff to fit inside the newly made cap.

Now that the staff is for the most part completed, I wanted to add variety to the scene.  First, I added torch sconces, because one of my pet peeves is having a scene be lit unrealistically, and the torches allowed me to justify adding some orange lights.  I added a fire effect to the torches, as well as some wall braces, to complete the look.  Unfortunately this wasn't enough light on its own, so I did end up needing to add a dim spotlight to complete the lighting.
After the torches, I turned to add some pots because my scene was still lacking, but for some reason every time I was about to finish the pot, my video card crashed - this happened 3 times - so I decided to leave the scene as is and render.

Self evaluation: Overall, the lighting came out very well, which is what I am always the most concerned about.  The staff could use some more complexity, but adding to it would require a complete overhaul of its design, something to do for the final.  The camera used for the animation was a little shaky, so I need to spend more time in the future smoothing out its motion.  The scene is not very complex, but what is there I think fits together well.