This Overview is about the 3.00am picture which Sebstian Nöll and me (David Kötterheinrich) created for 3dTotal.
While we had already created an indoor scene a few months ago ("room for two" which you can find on the great "Total Textures 13"), we wanted to create another, more 'filled' scene, since "room for two" was pretty simple and kind of... empty. Sebastian had the initial idea for this new scene; he wanted to create a room with a photo-wall. As he told me about that idea, I was excited and added a few more ideas. We then sat together and started working on it
Modelling
This is the Lighwave OpenGL Camera view. As you can see, the modells are pretty simple. Every part of the scene is modelled from a primitive.

The Balcony - simple tubes on a subdivided, then beveled floor

The Cup and cigar. Beveled tubes

Furniture - box modelling rules

The "mood"-lights, as Sebastian called them. Boxes, subdivided

The lights that lighten the photo
I think it's very obvious why I called the models simple. The room itself is a simple box with polys flipped inwards. The carpet on the floor is also a simple box-model.
Texturing & Lighting
Let me start with one of the most significant parts of the scene - the so called "mood"-lights on the left side. While the modelling is simple, the texturing relies on the incidence angle of the camera. It took us a lot of fiddeling to get them look right, to have them bright enough while not loosing shape, and still to appear warm.
The texturing of these lights are all the same, only the colour was changed. They have slight specularity on them, but the main trick is found in the Diffuse and Luminosity part of the texture
As you can see, it's basically colour with some specularity and gloss on it