The Blunderbus Returns

My redesign of the Blunderbus has been finished, and I have continued to learn the importance of lighting and texturing correctly. I could explain HDRI ranges and all that crap, but I don't really understand it myself! Instead I'll let the two images speak for themselves.

A regular old Mental ray render to start with, showing the new masucline design of the Blunderbus and his reflective and emmisive textures. Rather mediocre image at best.

HDRI rendering says hi.

And the posed, HDRI final gathered image rendered at production quality from Maya, a completely different image and mood and a much more successful image altogether. Notice the changing colours all over as I slowly re-rendered after editing parts of the image. Then I discovered IPR rendering, cutting the wait time for renders down even further!