Escorting Her Royal Highness To Safety

Description

She didn't care much for the royal family. Nor for the rebels. She didn't take sides. Or rather, she took the side that offered the most money. Right now, it was the King. He had dug really deep in the royal coffer to make her escort his beloved daughter to safety.


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Sometimes the characters get a life of their own when working on a scene (or writing a story). My first intention was to make a scene with a single female thief sneaking into a castle. Then I decided to add a male warrior as her companion. Didn't really like the outcome and changed him into another female thief. Tried some outfits, but didn't get the look I wanted. Put on Victoria Iven outfit and suddenly she changed from a stealthy thief to the Kings vulnerable daughter. Great!

When the scene was set I started to work on the lights. Wanted some more ambience but neither HDRI nor distant lights seemed to work, despite I had taken away a few walls. And I didn't use a skydome. Hmmm... I poked around and found something called "Blackbox". Turned out it was a gigantic black cube encapsulating the whole scene, preventing "outside" light from affecting the scene. At first I found this annoying. I turned the opacity of the Blackbox to zero. Suddenly the scene was flooded with light. I started tweaking the various "outside" lights but couldn't get it right. The scene really needed some ambience but it was a chore to adjust the lights. Then I went back to the Blackbox. What I first thought was annoying was actually really smart. By using the opacity of the Blackbox I only had to adjust one slider to get the right amount of ambience.

BTW, the Castle Dungeon by David Brinnen and ForbiddenWhispers is really a smart item (apart from looking super) with great looking built in emissive lights. It is a steal at 4,99 as PC.

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Qualifying items:
Sasha for Victoria 7 by Raiya and Force Hair by Goldtassel