Haunted Mansion - Lighting

Done in Maya.

This was done in Mental Ray.

I  modeled, textured and did lighting for it.

1 Directional light as the moon (with intensity of 2).

The moon is just glowing to give a gradient across the sky.

1 Directional light at the back to separate the Haunted Mansion from the background (with intensity of 1.3).

5 Directional lights for the bounce of the sky (placed in north, south, east, west and 1 down).

All of them were facing down at 45 degrees (with intensity of 0.2). This was used for the bounce.

Another 5 Directional lights for the bounce of the sky (placed in north, south, east, west and 1 down).

All of them were facing down with 60 degree (with intensity of 0.2). This was used for the bounce,

and dont forget to sample the sky (I put  the same colour of the sky for the light).

5 Directional lights for the bounce of the ground (placed in north, south, east, west and 1 down).

All of them were facing up with 60 degree (with intensity of 0.2). This was used the bounce,

and dont forget to sample the ground (I put  the same colour of the ground for the light).

That's a total of 15 lights.

There are 5 point lights on the lamps, the candle stand had 2 each.

The 3 lamps had also had 3 poits lights.

The grass is Fur (It's the first time I did Fur).

I found LIGHTING FUR to be very difficult (any hints or tips to improve lighting for Fur?).

There are 3 spot lights on either side (Left - Right).

To get the correct highlights and the shadows took a long time and enormous effort.

The modeling, texturing and lighting took me 10 days to do.

It took around 12 minutes to render (with Fur) and around 7 minutes to render (without Fur).

All textures are made by me.

This is an occlusion pass.

This is how I modeled it and this is how it looks bare.

It took around 16 minutes to render.

I was trying out options.

I was trying different ways of lighting fur.

I didn't like the colour of the lights and the fur.

In this picture, the colour of the 15 Directional lights and the sky was different.

This is somewhat close to what I wanted.

But it had lighting just below the lamps which I did not like.

The lamps also looked very dull.

This was an attempt at fur lighting which was a disaster.

There was very little glow to the moon.

This was the first time I used fur and this is how it looked !!

Not too amusing and looks very fake.

This was a render without fur and just basic lighting.

I tried to get the floor bump but it didn't work out.

This was not nice at all.

I tried to give a grassy feel to it but turned out to be very green.

This was one of my first renders.

The house can barely be seen.

I did not like this render at all.