Category:
3D
Date:
For my fifth weekly exercise in MMD60804 3D Modeling, the task was to create a simple interior scene and explore how lighting affects the appearance of different materials.
The exercise focused on building a room with a floor, walls, ceiling, and window opening, then using light to establish depth, shadows, and surface detail. The floor and walls also required image textures applied through simple planar UV mapping.
My aim was to create a brick-walled interior with a wooden floor and use a group of spheres to compare glossy, matte, metallic, and glass surfaces.
1. Understanding the Exercise
Unlike the previous exercise, which focused on modelling and subdivision, this task was assessed mainly through rendered images.
The geometry was deliberately simple so that lighting and materials became the main focus.
Scene element | Purpose |
|---|---|
Floor, walls, and ceiling | Create an enclosed space for light to interact with |
Window opening | Allow directional light into the room |
Central box | Provide flat surfaces for observing light and shadow |
Spheres | Compare highlights, reflections, roughness, and transparency |
Floor and wall textures | Practise planar mapping and texture scale |
The main challenge was making the room and objects readable through the lighting rather than relying on detailed modelling.
2. Building the Interior
I created a simple room with an open front so that the interior could be viewed clearly. The room included a floor, three surrounding walls, a ceiling, and a rectangular window opening on the left side.
The window gave the incoming light a defined opening, allowing its shape to become visible on the floor.
A box was positioned near the centre of the room, with spheres arranged around it and one sphere placed above it. This provided different heights and surfaces for observing how the light behaved.
[Insert a screenshot of the scene setup here.]
3. Applying the Wooden Floor Texture
I applied a wood flooring image to the floor using planar UV mapping.
Because the floor was flat, a planar projection was sufficient to place the image across its surface. The main consideration was the scale of the floorboards relative to the room and objects.
If the boards appeared too large, the room would seem much smaller than intended. Keeping their scale proportional helped establish a more believable interior.
The floor also provided a useful surface for observing the bright window light and the shadows beneath the spheres.
4. Texturing the Brick Walls and Window Surround
I applied a brick image texture to the walls and the inner surfaces of the window opening.
The brick courses were mapped horizontally, with a consistent scale across the wall surfaces. This was particularly important around the window, where stretched or uneven mapping would be easy to notice.
Applying the texture to the sill and inner edges helped the opening appear connected to the surrounding brickwork.
The contrast between the brick walls and wooden floor gave the room visual detail while keeping its geometry simple.
5. Lighting the Room
The lighting created a strong contrast between the darker interior and the illuminated floor.
Directional light entered through the window and produced a bright patch across the wood. The objects interrupted this light, creating cast shadows that helped show their positions within the room.
The ceiling fixture provided another visible light source inside the space. Its illumination and reflections helped reveal the surfaces of the spheres.
I checked the rendered view to judge whether the objects remained visible against the darker brick background. This showed how the direction of light can influence the mood of a scene as much as its brightness.
6. Comparing the Sphere Materials
The spheres provided a way to observe several surface finishes within the same room.
Material view | Visible characteristics |
|---|---|
Green glossy surface | A concentrated highlight and reflections of the surrounding room |
Matte orange surface | Subdued reflections and a clear transition between light and shadow |
Reddish metal surface | Coloured reflections and broad highlights |
Clear glass surface | Transparency, reflections, and distortion of the background |
The glossy green sphere was placed above the box, making its silhouette easy to distinguish against the brick wall.
The matte orange sphere showed the division between its illuminated and shaded sides clearly. The reddish metal sphere reflected the surrounding surfaces, while the clear glass sphere distorted the floor and objects visible through it.
The additional blue reflective sphere also contributed to the final arrangement and reflected nearby objects.
7. Preparing the Lighting-Only View
I rendered a lighting-only version using a plain grey material override.
Removing the textures and surface colours made it easier to examine the distribution of light throughout the room. The grey view showed the window light, cast shadows, and contact shadows beneath the objects without the distraction of the brick and wood images.
Comparing this image with the final render helped separate the effect of lighting from the effect of materials.
8. Rendering the Material Close-Ups
I prepared close-up views of the existing spheres to show their surface properties more clearly.
The close-ups revealed details that were less visible in the full-room image, including the shape of the highlights, the softness of reflections, and the distortion produced by the glass.
The objects, materials, and lighting were preserved while the cameras were positioned to frame each sphere.
[Insert the plastic, matte, metal, and glass close-ups here.]
9. Preparing the Submission Images
The images were rendered in Cycles with denoising enabled and exported as PNG files at 1920 × 1080 pixels.
Submission image | Purpose |
|---|---|
Lighting only | Show the illumination and shadows using plain grey surfaces |
Final render | Present the complete room with its existing textures and materials |
Plastic close-up | Show the green glossy sphere |
Matte close-up | Show the rough orange surface |
Metal close-up | Show the reddish reflective surface |
Glass close-up | Show transparency, reflection, and refraction |
The lighting-only and final images used the same room framing. The four material images used individual close-up views of the spheres in their existing positions.
Reflection
This exercise helped me understand how lighting, texture scale, and material settings work together in an interior scene.
The most useful comparison was between the lighting-only image and the textured render. The grey version made the shadows and light distribution easier to judge, while the final image showed how the materials changed the appearance of the same space.
The strongest part of the result is the window light across the wooden floor. Its shape and the shadows from the objects establish a clear direction of light and help give the scene depth. The glass sphere also demonstrates how refraction changes the appearance of the surfaces behind it.
One area I would improve is the balance between the bright floor and the darker walls. A more controlled fill light could reveal additional detail in the shaded areas while retaining the contrast of the window light.
For a more precise shader comparison, I would also test each material on one sphere in exactly the same position with a fixed close-up camera. The current arrangement presents the materials together, but their different positions affect the light and reflections they receive.
The exercise developed my understanding of planar texture mapping, interior lighting, surface roughness, reflections, refraction, and Cycles rendering. It showed me that even a simple scene requires careful lighting decisions to communicate its shapes and materials clearly.
Some Additional Modeling I Did
