The above video is an animatic I compiled from a set of project test renders, showing the project's progress from beginning to end.
This project started with an inverted box poly object that formed the room. The principal source of light, the room's main lamp, was next and at this early stage only rough proportions were set.
The initial pass of materials was used to show how basic lighting and radiosity worked in the scene; radiosity is relatively unimpressive without other objects present to bounce light off of.
Doors and molding in place reveal how the mottled blue of the walls makes flat white areas look splotched or dirty when there are no other objects present to catch light and low radiosity quality settings are used.
Once I realized that further experimentation with radiosity required objects to bounce light before the results would be worthwhile, it was time to ignore lighting and concentrate on modeling. It was also necessary, considering the limited time available, to leave out smaller details and focus on larger objects that were going to be visible and have an impact on the scene.
After the modeling stage was complete this checkerboard texture was used on the trickier objects to work out the mapping for materials. Here the arms are nicely mapped but the body of the chair needs more work.
When UVW mapping was finished some early lighting tests were made with low quality radiosity. It is worth noting that the closet doors no longer take on the full mottled look from the walls as there are intervening objects to defuse that effect. Some materials are over saturated, especially the book and table surface here.
After much tweaking the final version of the scene was relatively fast to render from any angle as the radiosity solution remained valid when only the camera was moved, so taking shots from different angles was a breeze. Even though it looks like objects cast shadows, no standard shadows were used. Dimly-lit areas like those underneath the monitor and chair were the result of a higher quality radiosity solution, less light bounced into those areas and they were soft naturally, like real life.
Full size renderings and the original animation are available in the Animation section.