Everything in the scene is either has a shader or textures that came with the model. For lighting, I am using an HDR of the Pixar Atrium, a key light pointed at the violin and a light for the candle. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the color scheme. I really like how the dark maroon drapery helps bring the violin out.  I might change to the pedal color on the tulips to probably a saturated red and reassess the shader on the vase. I will say, however, the overall brightness of the images seems a little dark. I think it's from how I am converting the original tif file to a png.

I played the violin from elementary through high school (6 years).  I stopped playing to pursue the career path I'm on now. I've also wanted to do a project with a violin somehow involved. I just could never find the right one until. 

For this project, I want to focus on making photorealistic shaders and textures for a still life scene. I will be using Renderman 22 and using models found online (Cites at the bottom of post).

Of course, the violin is the star of the scene even though it may not be the focus. In each of the images, I've borrowed several elements for my own piece. Some elements included the flowers, sheet music, inkwell, bust and candle.

After downloading all the models, I struggled finding a composition in Maya. I ended up turning to drawing some scribbles in one of my notebooks. By the fourth scribble, I found won that felt right. Back in Maya, I tweaked the composition more and ending up with composition you see above.

Models can be imperfect, but I know how to make them work. Here's what I did with a few of the models.

• Curtain to Drapery
  • What's a still life without a drapery? Its seems like it's missing something. Finding one to fit the scene was really hard. I looked out cloth, and blankets, but I went with a curtain. I was looking for something that already had wrinkles for one less sim to do. Curtains yielded the best results. I took some and sim a cloth coming down and to the side slightly.
• Paper
  • The paper was meant to be a poster. I was originally a plane with a lot of spiky vertices. I flattened them down a bit and used a nCloth to have them lay flatly on top of each other.
• Necklace
  • The necklace was modeled for a flat surface. I wanted them to hang down or of something. Creating a sim in Maya was taking a while to calculate for each pearl on top of the cord. I move the necklace to hang over a stack of books and used a bend deformer on the cord. I moved each pearl separately to flow along the cord.