Lighting bedroom- W.I.P

Lighting a bedroom scene

My main, current idea for this bedroom is to create a room where a college music student has been up all night trying meet his deadline extension. He had to compose some sheet music, so stayed up all night trying to complete it.  There are strewn, screwed up pieces of paper with failed writing attempts littered around, particularly around the bin, where he has missed! There are also piece of music that haven't been screwed up littered on the bed and surrounding floor. There 3/4 full bottle of wine on his bedside table, empty wine glass kicked over on the floor.  

The lamp next to his bed is still turned on, bringing attention to the music books and clock on his bedside table.  Other objects include an ashtray with many smoked cigarettes but one half smoked. I want to give the audience the impressed he has rushed out of his bedroom in order to meet his deadline

Lighting 

I want the time of day to be an early winter morning, in the northern hemisphere. I want there to be an orange hue to the light streaming in through the window.  I want there to be a dusty/ smoke residue atmosphere and will use Arnold atmospheric volume to create this.  This will enable me to create 'god rays' through the blinds which will help to suggest dust/smoke particles in the air. 

1 - Simple skydome setup, with a distance light for the sun for the sunlight streaming in through windows - there are also quad portal lights outside the windows to help reduce the noise and help guide the skydome light sampling through the windows.  Added some textures to wall and floor from substance Source.  

2 - Added some extra lights to enable me to create the sun beams/god rays through the blinds.  Tweaked the lighting setup and added 2 spot light outside of the two windows, I found I wasn't getting the results I wanted by just using the distance light.  By adding the two spot lights, together with the distance light, I could have the beams and sunlight working together. I just had to make sure they were all pointing in the same direction so not to break the illusion.
I also added colour to the other wall and some textures on the posters. 
What I want to do now, is change the hue of the light to an orange colour.

Current light setup

More orange in the sunlight so to give the impression of early morning:

Looking out onto a rainy street -W.I.P

Looking to create a scene with someone looking out of a window, onto a shiny, wet street. Light reflecting in puddles from street lights, vehicles and building.  I want it to be very colourful and vibrant on the outside, but in the interior I want it to be quite dark and depreciated.  I want to tell a story about a building and a person who has been left behind and is stuck in the past. I want it to be set in a UK city, during the Autumn at around 10pm.

Window Model:

I'll base the window on something like the image below - quite old and worn to give personality.

 

First window render - 

I've modelled the window and walls and have put in a HDRI map sky.  I reduced the output amount of the HDRI as it was too bright for 10pm at night during the autumn.  

I've applied a simple glass shader to the window pane and increased transmission values in the render settings to increased the amount of light and colours from the sky coming through the window.  You can also see the reflections on the glass, coming from the interior. 

I think I may need to soften the shadows but will see what it looks like after adding more lights. 

Wallpaper and test materials/lights

I want to create a wet and shiny cobbled street area outside so the colours from the reflected lights travelling across it like these examples:

I really like the way the colours splash across the ground, and create almost a painted effect from the reflected light.  I think it adds a lot of depth to texture as well. Also, will help with the contrast between the dreary inside and modern, colourful exterior.

Not too sure about how intense the light appears on the reflective surface - will lower it to experiment.

lowered exposure too much here after halving it, the reflected light is no longer visible. 

Material setup: added screen and coat layer to a cobbled street texture 

PBR Marble lighting exercise - Caustics

Marbles give the opportunity to explore refractive caustics as they are made out of glass and often exhibit many colours.  Even though they are usually made out of glass, they have a kind of liquid appearance on the inside. I thought this would provide me with a good opportunity to recreate a physically accurate marble in Arnold.

Shaders, textures and geo

To create the marble, I used 2 spheres; a small inside a larger one.  The small inside sphere has a standard shader assigned to it, adjusted to represent water.  The larger, outer sphere, has glass settings applied.   I added some Helix shapes in the centre of the marble, with a standard shader applied, but with emission values and colours.  The caustics work 

I wanted to add some unique looks to the marble and make it a bit fancier so I applied a space/galaxy texture to the inner sphere, into the transmission and emission colour. I also added a black and white version into the opacity slot of the shader to allow light to come through.  After applying all these aspects, the texture could be seen on the shader surface.  

The subtle caustics can be seen on the table surface: