'Huntington Road'

My latest finished work. Huntington Road is a main thoroughfare near to my house in York. I was inspired by a particular stretch one night. The road curves to follow the river Foss, the houses are broken up by the grounds of a halls of residence and the streetlights march into the distance. Unfortunately I couldn't find skill or patience to make my own road curve. I also couldn't be bothered to put in as many streetlights, or reproduce the gardens properly. So this is more a 'based on...' than an accurate picture, and mainly an exercise in lighting. The bulbs of the street and car lights were done by point lights; odd little things which shine in all directions but only a very limited way. Their glow on the pavement and road was reproduced by spotlights, which shine as far as you want but only one direction. I also had to chuck in a couple of low-watt distance lights so the darker areas were actually visible. And if you think there were far too many 'lights' in the last 3 sentences, so did Daz Studio. If you put too many lights into a scene it goes into a huff, reproducing them all in the final render but refusing to show them in the active viewpoint. What this meant was that I was working in near-darkness most of the time. Just like the council workmen fixing a bust waterpipe on the real Huntington Road. And until the heater in my house spluttered into life, the temperature was similiar too.

I quite like the final result, though wish I'd done more to make the river more visible. It seems to have the empty, mundane menace of a surburban street at night. But it does inspire the thought, "My god, was this really worth the effort?" One of my favourite colleagues on Renderosity said it reminded him of a Surrealist painting from the 1920's, itself a nicely surreal comment.