The Temple

The primary goal I set out with was to make a Temple-like structure with an appropriate surrounding. Fairly broad but simple.

I'm relatively satisfied with the result. I want to work a bit on the lighting from the fires out front still. If I could do it over, I'd have focused more on variations in positioning than intensity in order to get the effect I was looking for. The textures turned out fairly well, although I want to spruce up the stairs a bit. I also obviously need to add an interior. In fact, the one thing I definitely learned is that making sure to save frequently doesn't help at all if you don't make sure the location you are saving to actually has enough space to keep the file. Despite that minor setback, though, I do really like how it turned out, especially the camera perspective, although I wish I could have allowed more time for it to "look around" without having to have added hours to the render time.

Setting and Motion

I created a plane for the temple to sit on and applied a dirt image that I found on Google to it. I then created a rock out cropping out of a few spheres and applied the same texture.




I added in a camera. Using key frames, it starts off to the side, does a quick scan of the temple and then moves toward the steps. The motion was a bit smooth, so I keyframed some vertical motion along the path to the steps so that it would feel a bit more like someone walking. At the top of the steps, I keyframed the doors rotating to open for the camera.

Stone Carving

I started over on the statue. I made the new one (left in the above pic) slightly smaller than the original (right in the above picture). I also gave it significantly more sections to allow me to sculpt it with greater detail. The texture on the helmet piece is an image of metal that I took from Google and applied as a Blinn.

Fire and Stone

I shortened the height of the fire so that it looked more like a flame burning in the cauldron and less like a wispy pillar of flames floating up out of it. I also added a directional light and extended its radius to 180 degrees. By placing it within the area of the flames, it appears as if the fire is lighting the temple.

I also added a statute that I created using a cylinder for the body and a sphere for the head, then shaping it using CV points. The statue uses a modified Rock texture.