More Development Renders

Putting the lamp and the table in with the chairs made things look a bit more interesting, and it finally looked how I had imagined it once tweaking the numbers. I decided at that point to focus on rendering and presentation from then on, rather than any more coding or modelling, just because I knew how long it would take and what an important part of the process it is.

These pics show the development of the darker take on the original concept, with the furniture swirl not being something playful but rather something looming and imposing. The scale, colours, lighting and shadows all began to reinforce this theme as I refined the environment further.

Turning up the lights too bright did kinda ruin the effect.

This render uses one white overhead light, in the centre of the furniture swirl, because at the time there were over 100 lamps in the scene and I thought all that lighting would slow things down. I got this wonderful spiral shadow effect on the chair and spent some time recreating it later for one of my final renders.

Proper illumination and glow on the lampshades themselves (rather than just the bulb objects) paid off so much.

The shadows! They speak to me.

DOF fail:

Two renders from when I was setting up the base scene: