After having successfully created two 3D renders following tutorials, I now needed to have a go at creating my own space within Blender. Following tips I had gained from the tutorials, I decided to use a reference image to create my first Darkroom render. Having already amassed a selection of images from my visual research I decided on this photo of a Darkroom in Europe.
I choose this image to recreate as I wanted to experiment with the lighting within blender. The TV screen blaring blue light into this space and contrasting the red lights is a quite typical of these kind of spaces, and being able to use a form of motivated lighting would also help sell the realism of the scene. This is important as I want to strike the right balance between realism and fantasy in these images. Partly the point of creating images in this was is to link the fictitious nature of my constructed spaces with the fantasies that the patrons of darkrooms are trying to live out, so there should be an element of the simulated nature of the image visible. However, if the image looks too much like a video game I fear it will lose its sincerity and viewers will not be able to place themselves within the space.
While I was able to finish the tutorial renders in a day or so each, this render has taken a week to perfect. This may mean that I wont be able to complete many renders before the end of the module, as some of the designs I would like to create may be even more complex than this one. I feel however this method of image making works to well with the concept of the project, and that this should be a simple matter of quality vs quantity. The process I document below show my progress over the course of a week completing this first render of my own design.
This first stage is the modelling process. For this stage it was a simple matter of creating the shapes of each of the walls and object in the scene. I used the image above as reference for this layout, copying the camera positioning and referring back to it constantly to allow me to get the proportions correct. Blender actually allows you to work in real world measurements, which helped a great deal. In some cases I couldn't decided how big an object should be, so simply measuring a real world counterpart, such as a door frame, and then entering those into the software allowed me to make sure I was keeping everything in proportion. The screenshot here is from a bit further down the line as I had got a bit carried away before thinking of taking screen shots.
Although not present in the reference image, I decided to add stairs into this space in order to convey the space as being a basement. Many darkrooms are indeed in the basements of buildings, hidden away from the public eye. This is part of the history and culture, and was important to show in this worlk.
The screen shot below shows how I begun to add much smaller details, helping to build the word and sell the realism.
After a few days of modelling and adjusting sizes and proportions, I began to add lighting effects. As well ass adding a couple of simple cone type light sources hidden behind walls, I also added the TV screen as a motivated light source. The ray traced lighting system within blender allowed these sources to work in a very realistic manner, with the lighting bouncing correctly around the space. At this point, it almost began to feel as if I was working in some kind of studio, making minute adjustments to lights until created the right shadows, bounced into the right areas and so on. I could honestly experiment for days with this system to create interesting lighting set ups. you can also see in the image below that I went back to the modelling process and added imperfections to the walls, making them lean and bend as if much older, I also made the floor and ceiling bend and wave slightly to match, helping to add the feeling that this is a much older building, and giving it some history.
At this point I created my first render. Rendering these final images does take time, in fact it can be anywhere between 10 minutes up to a couple of hours. Especially as I am only working on my home laptop, which despite being built for photo editing and video creation, is not a Hollywood super computer ready to render out ultra realistic CGI. This first image was rendered out as a Raw image file with flat colouring to allow me to process it like I would a real world image within light room and Photoshop. However I felt that over all this image was not finished yet and needed some adjustments. The bricks on the wall did not seem proportioned correctly so the texture would need adjusting. The pointing on the wall didn't look right either and this was because I had used the textures wrong, Blender uses what known as PBR textures, PBR stands for Physics Based Rendering. This means that instead of simply using a single image file for a texture, instead we use a set, one for the colour, one that dictates reflections, one for adding smaller 3d details and one for texture (depending on the material there may be more).
This next render has been post processed. I fixed the texturing on the wall, and changes the texturing on the concrete floor as well as I was worried the original looked flat and repetitive. however I also felt the space looked a bit glossy, and almost too smooth. Comparing this to real world images taking in similar spaces, I realised that working in a space as dark as this would put some toll on my camera, I would be using a high ISO and wide aperture. When setting up Blender to complete its final render, you essentially use a built in camera that allows you to adjust the focal length, aperture and shutter speed, so I adjusted these to suit for my final image.
This is the final version of this render. Here I used a wide aperture, giving the picture the shallow depth of field, and in Photoshop I added noise to simulate the camera being set to a higher ISO. Within Blender I also added volume scattering, which essentially adds a fog to the scene, allowing for volumetric lighting. These clubs often use smoke machines, and basmeents can often be dusty, so this again helped to add to the realism of the scene.
Despite taking nearly a week to produce, and multiple renders to get right, I am incredibly pleased with this image, its photo realistic, its atmospheric, and it definitely feels like a darkroom space. There are things I feel I could get better, for example I could add more smaller details to help sell the space more, and maybe work on my choice of textures as the floor almost looks like rusted metal rather than the concrete I was going for. I think as well,m the type of lighting used in these spaces is helping me a bit as well, by hiding some of the areas that could use work. Planning the images is going to be a big part of getting this right though, rendering these images can take so long, that mistakes can end up resulting in a lot of wasted time.In all in all, I am very confident that this is going to work as a method for creating a final set of images exploring these spaces, and its going to allow me a lot more freedom within the space once created.
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