Environment

I'm revising the environment to be both better suited to an animation and to reduce render times. Since I have the chance, I wanted to make a sort of counterpoint to the previous project's wild jumble, and make a sort of calm orderly place with perhaps a blue tint. The owner of this ship of thoughts is finding his way out of the storm, and being led into a place of clarity and tranquility. A hard-earned wisdom.

The whole look is still fairly eerie and ethereal because this is not a place where physical beings walk. It is a place for metaphor and memory, for fiction and philosophy, intangible things.

I can't go back to depth-mapped shadows now, raytracing is just better. And with a really high res depth-map, it's way slower than raytracing anyway on this scene. That last 640x480 render was only 4 seconds, so I should get away with it once my particles are in. It's only a few hundred spheres :D. Also, quadratic decay rate on the point light coupled with sparing use of ambient light to help out the farther corners seems to be a pleasing combo.