It's actually a rather odd room from the description, and it
took me a while to wrap my head around its physical structure and what it
actually looked like....

> I have some misgivings about the brick walls which do not
> seem very Victorian to me for indoors.

Right.  I wasn't really sure where to go with that, especially since it seemed
like it _should_ be out of place:

"Miss Loach's house was a mixture of old and new.  Formerly it had been
an unpretentious cottage like the others, but she had added a new wing
of red brick built in the most approved style of the jerry-builder, and
looking like the villas in the more modern parts of Rexton.  The
crabbed age and the uncultured youth of the old and new portions,
planted together cheek by jowl, appeared like ill-coupled clogs and
quite out of harmony.  The thatched and tiled roofs did not seem meet
neighbors, and the whitewash walls of the old-world cottage looked
dingy beside the glaring redness of the new villa.  The front door in
the new part was reached by a flight of dazzling white steps.  From
this, a veranda ran across the front of the cottage, its rustic posts
supporting rose-trees and ivy.  On the cottage side appeared an old
garden, but the new wing was surrounded by lawns and decorated with
carpet bedding.  A gravel walk divided the old from the new, and
intersected the garden.  At the back, Susan noted again the high brick
wall surrounding the half-completed mansion.  Above this rose tall
trees, and the wall itself was overgrown with ivy."

"The floor was of oak, and there was--strangely enough--no
hearth-stone.  The French windows opened into the conservatory, now
denuded of its flowers, and stepping into this Jennings found that the
glass roof was entirely closed, save for a space for ventilation."

> See also how other camera positions might increase the dramatic effect
> (cf Citizen Kane).

Hmmm.  I'll be the first to admit that I have no skill with, or natural sense
about how to go about lighting or framing most scenes.  I'm sure most of the
artistic details concerning CK's cinematography were lost on me, so I might have
to cue it up again and actually observe more rather than just "watch" it.
My first camera was placed to the right of the passage, since for whatever
reason I had it in my mind that that's where the door to the room was, and then
I moved it to give a better view angle for the conservatory which was the only
other major feature.

Part of my thinking was that there should be an angle that gives a decent look
down into the tunnel where the light acts as a visual cue to suggest that it
further leads to the place in the book.
Also right now, since it's still just a scene in the midst of development, I
wanted to pull the camera back and use the ultra-wide-angle camera to let me see
as many things as possible until things "got settled" and then maybe I'd run an
animation sequence to move the camera all over the place and see if anything
"popped".

I suppose the biggest thing that bothers me is the lack of contrast in the
image.  I actually made an attempt to run PowerStrip and adjust my screen gamma,
and the desktop is noticeably a bit more "washed out".

Next is the line curvature resulting from the ultra-wide camera.  Maybe I'll
have to narrow the angle or just switch back to a regular perspective.  I
haven't yet got the experience to decide.

Off the top of my head, I don't think I've done too much with textures, other
than for the paint, which is something that seems to work well enough for
another WIP, but it still too crude and "CGI-looking" for this.  IIRC I just
scaled up bumps in one direction to give the impression of brush marks.

I took a bit of a break to look over the PoitWriter code, and now I've got a bit
of gainful employment, so it might be another week yet until I delve into
hammering out a lot more SDL to flesh this thing out better.

Thanks for looking it over and helping me along.  This ought to be a good
opportunity to learn the finer POV skills and discover some new and useful tools
and methods.

I know _you guys_ get it, but it's always amusing when people see what I'm doing
and say, "WHY are you doing this...?"  :)
( .. or .. "Why are you:  photographing that brick wall / granite block /
painted wall /  textured counter in McDonalds / pebbled ashtray ???"
"Who are you calling BOZO?"
"I understood the first sentence of what you said, and then you went of onto
this solid geometry thing and isosurfaces and surface normals.... and my eyes
glazed over.   You're so pretty.")    :D

Thomas

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