Monastery Hallway

It was in the middle of the night when this idea popped up in my head. Immediately, I knew exactly how it would look like. So, I got up from my bed and went straight to my PC to start working on it.

Of all projects I have done, this one I finished the fastest for sure. After 10 hours of work, my layout was done.

The next day, I worked on the details.

Before I started working on it, I did some research on the internet to find lighting references for the exact picture I had in my mind, but I couldn't find exactly what I wanted. Instead, I looked for good lighting points and some pictures that were quite similar to the one I had in mind.

The focus of my demo reel is lighting, so I wanted to spend as little time as possible on modeling and texturing. But that's why I decided to create my scene entirely with Megascans by Quixel. Luckily, Megascans has a lot of assets that fit perfectly with the scene.

I took a risk by not starting with a blockout first but instead starting directly with the real environment, but I was very clear about the picture in my head.

After that, I started applying the textures (which I also got from Megascans) and set the lighting right.

In the end, I used volumetrics to add more atmosphere to the scene. This time, I rendered the lights already in the color I wanted. 

I encountered some difficulties, especially with the floor. At first, I couldn't decide which type of floor texture I wanted. Then, I projected the texture onto the floor, but it got stretched because of the camera and focal length. So, I had to adjust the camera angle as well.

The softwares I worked with are Maya, Arnold, Nuke, Davinci Resolve and PureRef. One of my main learnings were the importance of a well organized plan.

It is extremely important to collaborate with other students on your projects, to listen to ideas and feedback and to learn from each other.

For this specific project, I constructed everything by myself and aimed to portray what I had in my imagination on the final result. It went well, and I really like how it turned out. Having a clear plan in mind is important to me.

Credits:
All Assets: Quixel Megascans
Music: Traditional Asian Music: No Ads, Instrumental Music, Work from Home Background Music by DailyLifeMusic on YouTube

Special Thanks to:
Fabrizio Meli
Gunnar Schelhorn
Jutta Müller
Michelé Sottong