Public Update - Environments (Patreon)

After only about four years of daily use of this software, I'm already learning how to use depth of field properly. (I know, I know.) For some pictures I've done an artificial background blur in photoshop, but now I'm trying to learn how to do it well in the original renders. This has the added benefit of actually speeding up rendering time, which is nice, particularly for large, complex shots like the one above. Some of my renders can take over my computer for more than eight hours, so shortening the length is good when I can do it.

In my defence, in PAL there's not actually that much need for DoF because it's mostly confined to tight quarters and the backgrounds don't matter for much, other than preferably looking pretty. The way PAT is structured, the pictures are more prominent and so the background environments are much more important. Where in PAL you would examine an item in the room description, in PAT you'll be clicking on objects of interest on the screen, so it's necessary for those environments to be complex and interesting.

Sorry for not putting cute girls in this one, but what do you think? Am I making progress? Any thoughts? Let me know in the comments!