WIP for year's end

Was just impatient to show off a work-in-progress of my recent project. As mooted before, it's just a practice exercise for me to learn with, but I'm happy with what I've got so far. Check out these pics:

Before

After

As you can see, I've dramatically lit the scene by playing in Combustion. I will reveal later on how I did this, once I've got the whole thing sorted out. Note also that the flames on the logs were added later. It was made in the same file in 3D Studio Max, but rendered as a separate pass. I think it can do with a bit of tweaking here and there, but it shows the power of compositing and how, with a bit of smarty-pants trickery, you can get some great atmos out of an otherwise boring shot.

Coming up next will be some volumetric fog and some extra particle effects, plus the full video which will really show off what I'm trying to achieve here. But that will have to wait until 2008!