Christie: Bedroom 3 render (1st)

Conception: A return and continuation to a particular scene created in XPS.

Method: Load previously saved Blend file, set up nodes, smooth meshes, render, share.

Commentary: Ah, yes... the scene with what looked like over 600 meshes which needed to be set up. Well... I finally completed it, and a lot sooner than I thought as I decided to forge ahead with it. (Poor Rachel is being neglected again.) Hopefully there aren't too many mistakes because trying to track them down and rectifying it would take a long time. That thing in the background on the left looks a bit odd...  I do intend to return to this again though and make other adjustments to it.

You (yes, you) may recall from the original picture I intended for this to be a full length shot but the cushions obscured her legs. Now knowing how to remove meshes (in XPS and Blender) I removed the cushions to allow for the full length shot and set the camera to account for this. I even set the resolution for the render to be 3820 x 1080. But... the pose and positioning was slightly wrong for me to do that. Christie sort of floats a bit. (She's still a ghost?!) I would need to adjust the pose in the original .SCENE file in XPS, save the pose, import the model into Blender (render set up shenanigans) and import the pose into Blender to do so though. Why? Because I don't fancy setting up all those nodes for the setting again. As is, I could delete the current Christie model meshes and save the setting as a set up Blend file for rendering purposes and import models I want to render - thus vastly reducing render set up times. Not sure if I'll go ahead with it just yet as I should get back to Rachel. We'll see.

I suppose the main bugbear for me is her right arm where the mesh folds back on itself and how her left wrist looks as well. It's not too bad, but someone with the knowledge of Photoshop could definitely clear those up (which doesn't include me).

An interesting point is the expression. In Christie: Mandarin dress (3rd)[256 sample] I note the change in expression from XPS to Blender using the same pose. This was a .obj export from XPS I used here and the expression seems to have stayed closer to that in XPS. I suppose the lack of an armature makes this difference. The next time this is seen again will be with imported model and pose into Blender. I wonder how that will work out... The main difference I think are in her eyes. There does seem to be a different angle to them.

I'm somewhat uncertain about the lighting. 'Better' lighting would give a better view of the scene, but the atmosphere of the piece doesn't lend itself to being brightly lit. Taking the latter, I'm not sure if I'm positioning the lamp in Blender in the correct spot for best effect. Would like to be able to have used a spotlight lighting effect, but I haven't managed to work out how those work in Blender yet. A spotlight would be best for... poles... 

On a 'technical' note, I think this render pushed my PC somewhat. Blender crashed a few times in trying to render this... Next time I build a PC, I'll need to choose my components more carefully in order to play games and render.

Credits:
Christie via DragonLord720
Pose by elDM (adjustments by me)
Setting uploaded by Surya Murail, converted by MindForcet
XNALara Posing Studio 11.8
Blender 2.77a
Assets/Copyright: Koei Tecmo, ???

P.S. Incidentally, the textures for the lamp are correct - still looks strange though...

P.P.S. Continued this by returning to XPS to adjust the pose to import into Blender. While I managed to correct most aspects, the render itself was stubborn as Blender crashed every time I tried to render the image. It didn't matter whether I placed the load on CPU or GPU. Unfortunately it looks like my conception of the fuller body shot will go unrealised for now.  

6th July 2017