This one came from another dream I had. Nothing really happened in the dream that I can remember, but the physical space was pretty striking:

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There’s lots of meanings we could ascribe to this. I have an interpretation, but I’d rather leave it up to you.

Getting better at post-production

I did a lot in the final editing/composition process here (after all the modeling, texturing, and rendering of the scene).

I used a depth filter to fine-tune the look of the staircase, making it appear to run out of light just at the very bottom, not before or after that point. That would’ve been hard to achieve using just the placement and intensity of the virtual lights. I rendered it with a bit of extra light in the staircase and then darkened it artificially.

I also added the green glow in post-production (also using the depth filter, to apply it more strongly as the surfaces get farther way). And I used color correction to give the upper room that very warm, soft look. Subtle effects like these are much easier to do using classic image editing techniques, rather than painstakingly messing with all the object textures and virtual lighting.

I’ve learned a lot from this video, which outlines how to use all the main tools in Adobe Lightroom to edit photographs. I don’t use Lightroom, but Blender’s compositor has the same tools. I especially like how he prescribes a particular order of operations, going from the coarse effects to the subtler ones.

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I lift the veil up to reveal a fascination,
And if you crave it then you know that you are injured