Mage's Desk - Update!

UPDATE: May 11, 2017
I've textured the leather cover of the notebook and started sculpting new wooden desk planks which will replace these horrendous, temporary ones.

I've also been experimenting with lighting and color grading as the previous render had this yucky, yellow sunlight.

Here's the latest render:

That filename though: 100-Skylight_ACES_WB6500K_Gamma1.0_SharpDef_24MP-FOR_EXTERNAL_GRADING-ProPhotoRGB_Log_tagged___GRADED_sRGB_tagged_1280px_4web.tiff

Still a ton of work left, most of the scene will be rearranged later, but for now while I'm making assets, I'm keeping it this way.

Anyway, expect more stuff soon, cheers!
David.

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Older update

I've been working here and there on my Mage's Desk project lately.

Still deep in the work-in-progress phase, but it's slowly coming together...

Notes
The desk texture is just a temporary placeholder, that's why it's pixelated.

Everything in this scene and renders is 3D including smoke and caustics. No 2D tricks whatsoever will be used. I never liked seeing that stuff because it defeats the purpose of even doing the scene in 3D. If it's "3D art" then keep it in 3D. Only global adjustments like color grading and basic post-processing (grain, etc.) are fine with me.

My PC sucks so I have no idea when will this be finished. Render times are ridiculous. I'm talking days. 3D texturing is pretty much impossible. It ain't easy.

"Mage's Desk" is just a temporary code name, I'll come up with a better name when the time comes.

This scene was originally inspired by a few locations in Skyrim, as I've said in previous posts on it, but it reached a point where I've actually developed quite a bit of backstory with a few characters and a plot and I'm thinking of releasing a (short) story about it one day. As of now, it's a little too rough, just like this image is. There's a lot of work left and not a lot of free time, as always.

Here's one of the recent renders. I did some more work but didn't bother rendering the whole thing again because of render times.

Click to enlarge

And here's a few older renders:

Texturing and shading of this bottle

Older render with no post-processing

PS. I hope you have a calibrated monitor and your browser has a proper color management setup as that's the only way to see the images the same way I do.