WIP: Day/Evening/Night — or More Rooms? Wedding Chapel. (Patreon)

I want to change up my usual approach a little and, this time let you decide which direction I should take with the next environment.

Sometimes I get messages from who are a little disappointed that a room has a day or night version, but no evening lighting option. So this time I decided to bring that question up before I get too far into development.

The screenshot is still very much a work in progress and more of a rough template for now — for example the chairs are just an array of identical instances — but I think the overall concept is already pretty much there.

I’ve actually been preparing for this environment for several months, slowly creating individual elements in advance. Quite often I worked on them while textures for the previous room were baking.

Right now, I see two possible directions:

Option 1 — more atmosphere and multiple lighting versions

We keep only the main hall, but create several full lighting setups for it: day / evening / night. That would let me focus much more on the atmosphere, lighting, and overall mood of the scene.

Ideally, I’d also like to add things like a small reception area, a piano, guest tables, and some other decorative elements. I may even expand the hall a little and perhaps put the piano near the window. I’m not completely sure yet — these are still just ideas.

There’s another advantage to this option as well: I can use higher-resolution textures and won’t have to cut back as much on the details.

Option 2 — more space

We keep one fixed lighting setup, most likely daytime, but expand the environment itself. That would give us two or three rooms: the main hall, additional rooms on the sides, and possibly a reception area.

You can already see the doorways on the left and right in the screenshot — those are where the additional rooms could go. There’s also another passage behind the camera that could be used as well.

Personally, I’m leaning a little more toward the first option, because I’ve never made several full lighting versions for the same scene before. But this time I want to leave the choice to you :)

So, what do we choose?

1. One room — Day / Evening / Night
   (this will take longer to bake, even with the smaller space)

2. Two or three rooms — one lighting setup

Don’t be shy about simply writing what you think. Even one comment is enough for me