Fantastic Voyage - Scene 03 alterations render

Here is the render of the 3rd scene with the adjustments I had made, the haploid cell seems to be maybe a little too erratic in size frequency and I'm wondering if it needs a few more tweaks or does this look alright?

Fantastic Voyage - Scene 03 Render *Unfinished

I used the ocean shader in this render applied to my haploid which is germinating from the spore, I had keyed it down to keep the scale together but the flare off is always occuring so I might instead use a deformer and key the distortions individually to the best of my ability.

Fantastic Voyage - Scene 01 and 02 W/O HUD

The rendered files of my spore seem okay at this time, I am currently rendering my 3rd scene now just to get the explosion effect correct in looks before going onto my germinating spore into diploid stages.

Fantastic Voyage - The render fix

-Original Render

- New Render

After speaking with Simon this morning I have altered my scene and the result was an overhaul to the scene and stripping everything from the spores except the X-ray shader. Because of the complexity of the shapes the glass was not doing anything for them. So that is gone and raytracing has also been removed, with the background gone and indirect lighting deselected now it is just the raw spores moving in this void. Earlier in my designs I had shown the Spores in this form and my decision to revert back is entirely due to the fact that the render times are now around a minute a frame which is what I had expected it to be like initially. With my HUD added I believe it will belong more than the render above this one.

Fantastic Voyage - Renders (Help!)

Okay so above is a render of my spores, it was in Production quality, 1920-1080, Mitchell and one frame took 40 mins to render. And even this isn't the resolution I want..

Then I did the same frame but this time it was in Default quality, 960-540, Gauss and it took 11 mins to render. Has anyone got any tips at all about what I could do in my render settings? Am I doing it wrong or does it make sense? Regardless over the weekend I aim to render out my Scenes in Default so I have something to work with.

Fantastic Voyage - Scene 02 Render frames

*Renders all taken on default setting taking between 4-3 minutes per frame

Crit Presentation - Secret Lairs

Crit Presentation - Secret Lairs - Volcanic Princess

Unfinished Secret Lair Render

My secret lair for the Volcanic Princess, it is unfinished and has its flaws but I think we can gain a general impression of what I had looked to accomplish in this task. I have altered my design three times in the duration of this project from a Throne room, Great hall and now a volcanic play pen. I managed to texture some elements in the scene but have skipped a few stages to achieve this look. Hopefully I can present this to reflect my work from this idea over the past two and a half weeks to appose the seven week duration.

Lighting and Rendering 1 - Night Ex Lighting

I had numerous problems when I followed Alan's tutorial with the final step of the Whimsy House's exterior lighting. I took notice and followed his instructions like I always do but the right window had a hotspot and I couldn't get it to resemble his. It was tedious to figure out how far to place the light and the intensity. My other fault is the white outline that has been created, from the Photoshop part I did selection, inverse then expanded like he says but this outline seems demeaning to the overall effect. What does people think? Comment away :)

Lighting and Rendering 1 - Romantic Ex Lighting

Third Lighting and Rendering session with small alterations to the lights and the ambient occlusion node. It really hints a warm feeling and sets the mood this is an emotional environment. I should experiment with my coloured lights when working on my own work.

Lighting and Rendering 1 - Sunset Ex Lighting

Next tutorial was pretty basic following on from the first, it was just adjusting the effects I had already made in the previous tutorial as well as creating a new light source located at the front axis.

Lighting and Rendering 1 - Midday Ex Lighting

The first of the Whimsy House tutorials regarding the Lighting and Rendering to give the audience the illusion of Midday. I found following the tutorial easy and it has given me experience to take into my current Maya projects for the Secret Lairs project.