Lighting and skydome test

The next stage of setting up the scene was to create a skybox. Considering the relatively flat terrain it soon became apparent seeing where the skydome hits the snow would be an issue. As shown below an unrealistic and undesirable effect resulted from the sample sky texture (,2015).

I researched other sky textures and decided a more flat image (public domain.com, 2015) of the sky manipulated with uv mapping would work better. Using a cylindrical UVW map with the fit tool result in a nice effect. To better hide the intersection of the geopshere and the terrain I added some hills with the soft selection tool on the vertices. 

In terms of lighting, an omni light was used to light this scene. Though this quite obvious from the section near the power generator, it does give the impression there is one big light source such as the sun gleaming on the solid colour snow.

A subtle omni light seems to fit the purpose of the snowy tunnel best. Though the location of it can be seen where the highest intensity is, moving this out of shot will allow me to use the otherwise effective

As before, the screenshots of the hangar demonstrate experimenting with the best placement of of the omni light. Though the first covers everything more evenly, the latter benefits from having no obvious centre of intensity. This is because the two lights are in front and behind the hangar respectively - albeit providing noticeably less light on the floor. It is likely a balance between the two will be met in final tw

This final screenshot demonstrates my experimenting with the spot lights. To give purpose to the ceiling lights, I have included this type of light to illuminate the ships stored under them. This serves to both highlight them to the audience among the similarly white background, but will also benefit when R2D2 goes to repair the ship.

Good parts:

• Sticking to the fairly standard omni and spot lights shouldn't affect render time too much
• Lights serve to better highlight parts of the scene or even specifics on the models as well having context in the scene
• Experimenting with different affects has resulted in the bets solution for each scene's need
• Lights compliment metal texture seen on snowspeeder grills and floor lights in hangar

Improvements:

• Seeing the source of the omni light takes away from the realism of the scene in places. Though where possible this has been moved out of scene or shot this has been necessary in others and will need to be cleverly avoided in the camera work
• Multiple lights in the scene could cause issues with shadows