I started by lighting the interior of the cell: my thinking was that if I could get the interior looking good first, then I could add lights to the exterior to capitalize on it. I first added a point light and four small spotlights across the floor:
I liked the look of this setup, so I looked back at my references and saw that there was a spotlight shining down on the centre of the cell. Looking at the rest of my references, I reasoned that the cell was meant to be lit by the overhead spotlight, and then the light refracted throughout the rest of the cell/light comes from underneath. To test it out, I put a white spotlgiht overhead, and then tinted the point light inside a light blue.
I was very happy with the look but I saw that there were no lights going across the floor in my references, and the four of them stopped the floor from being reflective due to the light maps overlapping. I took the four floor lights away, and ended up with this final setup.
And so, I set to work on my cinematic.
Comparing my references and the scene I've built, I'm very happy with the result overall. I know that my scene wasn't overly complicated, but it instead relies heavily on aesthetics and atmosphere to be effective: something I think I was able to pull off somewhat effectively even with my limited experience.
In my cinematic, I tried to make deliberate parallels between my scene and screenshots from the actual film: both as a showcase of the build, because I'm proud of it, and as an easier method of comparison for the person marking it.
I learned a lot while making this: I got to grips with Unreal (at least a bit), I came to understand how materials, UVs and lights interact, and I made a scene that I'm overall pretty proud of.
As a final hurrah, here's some comparisons of the movie and my scene.
Thanks all for reading, and I'll keep you updated on any future projects!
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