Daylight is an adaptive desktop wallpaper I made in Blender. It changes throughout the day, having a rising and setting sun as well as a character doing something for every hour of the day.
the wallpaper during daytime
The Process
I started out with a layout of a small low-poly environment that had a few elements I could later put the character in, such as a tipi with a campfire, a bridge over a lake, a forest and a few flowers. I also put one unique (sometimes hidden) animal or pet in every hour of the day.
The main learning curve of this project was making and animating the character. I made a very simple little guy loosely based on what I looked like at the time. I learned how to rig and pose it, so the little guy could have various poses and facial features to fit with what activity he's doing. Even though it was hard to learn, this made it infinitely easier to make changes later than if I had just hand-modelled every pose.
the character model I made of myself
Challenges
One of the biggest challenges in designing the wallpaper was to make the lighting and colours transition smoothly from day to night. Even though it's not as important as with an animation, where frames are playing back to back, it still helps the different wallpapers feel more cohesive. I solved this by using a combination of a virtual 'sun' that rises and sets at a realistic time and angle. To make things more visible at dawn and at night, I complemented this with some extra soft lights.
the wallpaper during night time
I had already been making stylised environments in Blender before, but this project really allowed me to go in-depth with that by learning how to make a cute character and animals that actually populate these tiny worlds that really liven up the whole thing.
