On vacation in Europe this summer, I took this little picture. Nothing spectacular about it, but as a lighting test to get my class into advanced mental ray shaders and lighting, I thought it'd be a good place to start. I've built the scene and started with some simple renders:
Perhaps I've taken the colour corrections a bit far and the vignetting is too much. However it's just fun to play around on something simple rather than overly grand ideas that never get finished. This initial rendering is just using Blinns and Lamberts. Nothing fancy yet. Single area light, ray traced shadows, and some very basic Final Gathering. I'm using an HDRI for the reflections though I can see that I need to boost the gain on them a bit as there's some crushing of the brights which is dropping them into the ugly grey area on the surface of the saucer.
Anyway, all that to say that I've also jumped on the 3D bandwagon. Hopefully all two of you that read this blog have a pair of red/blue 3D glasses. Strap yourselves in and hold on tight! You haven't seen anything this powerful since Avatar:
