Locked Out: the Illusion of Freedom

There’s a strange paradox I think about often: how the spaces that are supposed to feel open can sometimes feel the most restrictive. Walking alone at night through a city—lights flickering above you, shadows stretching behind—you’d think that being outside means freedom. But instead, it’s tense. 🕯️

That emotion—the unease, the doubt, the claustrophobia—is what I wanted to capture in this project. The idea that the outside world equals freedom doesn’t hold up anymore. Sometimes, you feel safer locked inside the same four walls you’ve convinced yourself to call home—just because, in there, you’re not scanning every movement, every stranger, every shadow, trying to stay ahead of whatever threat might be waiting. 🚪

This cinematic cityscape was built in Maya, inspired by the stark visuals of film noir and the warped dreamscapes of German expressionism. It’s not about technical perfection—it’s about building a world that feels like something.

Ready to dive in?

Here's what you will need ⬇️

Software:

( both software eligible students, educators, and qualifying educational institutions should have free access to it)

1. Maya
2. Arnold Renderer

While only software is required, make sure your computer meets the system requirements.

I didn’t just open Maya and start clicking. Before anything was built, I sat with the question:

What does “freedom” look like when it’s a lie?

I browsed through visual references—from the harsh contrast of black and white detective films to the jagged, impossible shapes of expressionist cinema like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. These films distort reality to reflect psychological tension—and that’s exactly what I wanted.

I made a moodboard using screenshots and concept art that captured these feelings. Broken geometry. Lights that shine where they shouldn’t. Spaces that feel off. This moodboard became my compass.

Once I had my aesthetic direction, it was time to map out the emotional terrain. I decided the entire scene would take place in an alley—because alleys are liminal spaces. You're not indoors, you're not really outside. You're in-between.

To reflect psychological distortion, I tilted buildings at irregular angles and exaggerated their height. I didn’t want it to look real, I wanted it to look like a memory of fear—blurry, slightly surreal.

The most important rule I set for myself here: light doesn't behave naturally. It doesn’t spill in from the sky. It seeps out from inside the buildings, like the city is alive and watching you.

Instead of using pre-made buildings, I built mine from scratch. Why? Because lighting was central to the entire effect, and I needed full control over how the buildings reacted to it.

I kept the poly count low but focused on structure. These aren’t glass skyscrapers—they're blocky, looming structures that feel dense and inescapable. Each floor has just enough space for a few windows and some variation.

This gave me the freedom to play with light angles, reflections, and shadows in a way that downloading assets just wouldn’t allow. I used a lot of inspiration from this tutorial.

To create light channels, I modeled custom windows using cubes.

1. Start with a cube.
2. Scale it into a panel shape.
3. Use the Edge Loop tool to define the window topology.
4. Delete select faces to create holes where light will pass through.

Once you’ve got one solid window frame, clone it across to build a floor. But precision is key here—misaligned panels will break immersion.

To align:

1. Change the pivot to the bottom corner of your frame.
2. Use vertex snapping (hold V) to snap them together edge-to-edge.
3. Check from above and below to ensure no accidental gaps.

It’s repetitive work—but oddly satisfying. Like laying bricks for a haunted house.

After one full floor is done, duplicate upwards to build your tower.

This step might seem simple, but keep an eye on proportions. Buildings that are too tall or too short mess with your scene’s depth. I built mine to be just slightly taller than the camera’s frame—so they always feel like they’re looming just out of sight.

The ground floor is your chance to add character. Every building above might be copy-pasted—but the entrances make each feel distinct.

Some ideas:

1. Add awnings or overhangs to simulate storefronts.
2. Create reinforced doors with no windows (to imply danger inside).
3. Use blocked-up windows to suggest abandonment or secrecy.

These variations subtly tell different stories—and when placed side by side, they create tension through contrast.

Here’s where you bring everything together. I started arranging buildings along an alley—some directly opposite each other, some slightly rotated or staggered. I threw in a garage on one end to break the vertical monotony.

Spacing is crucial here. Too wide, and it feels safe. Too narrow, and your scene gets cramped. Aim for that sweet spot where the viewer feels observed—but has nowhere to run.

Streetlights in this world aren’t comforting. They’re watchful. They cast small pools of visibility that only make the surrounding darkness deeper.

I imported a simple lamp model and added an Arnold Photometric Light just beneath the bulb. This simulates natural light falloff—and it looks real.

Keep it dim. The light should reveal as little as possible.

IES profiles are data files that mimic how real-world light sources behave. Think of them like “light fingerprints.”

I used a wide IES profile that created a circular pool of soft light. It contrasts beautifully with the harsh, rectangular windows and creates pockets of vulnerability in the street.

Pro Tip:

Assign your lights to a preset. That way, tweaking one changes all—and trust me, it’s a game-changer.

IES lights don’t emit visible geometry, so I added a glowing bulb manually:

1. Create a small sphere.
2. Assign an Arnold Standard Surface Shader.
3. Turn the emission weight up and you can leave the colour as is.

Adjust the glow until it looks like it's alive—but doesn’t overpower the scene.

Once you're done, I assigned it the following Parameters. They helped me get the best glow so that it doesn't overpower the other lights in the scene

This is the heartbeat of the illusion.

Behind each window, I placed a spotlight pointing outward. The goal is to reverse the typical narrative—where light draws you in. Here, light pushes you out.

To finish off the spotlight setup, we need to change the pivot of all the spotlights to match that of the building so that when we make any transform modifications to the building such as rotating them to tilt the buildings then it is also applied to the spotlights. Below is where I set the pivot point of all my spotlights to. I also made sure to set the entire building Groups pivot to the edge of the centre window ledge.

Once everything is set-up, you'll want to create another lighting preset to assign your spotlights. These are the lighting settings that worked best for me. Creating a preset will save you an unimaginable amount of time.

Once the fundamental components have been successfully designed, this is where you can add a touch of creativity and finish building our scene. The main changes I made here were to extend the road and add the zig zag effect to emphasise it being a landscape of confusion. I also added a couple of additional props like a trashcan and some trash bags.

Fog isn’t just atmosphere—it’s a canvas for light, and it comes in handy a lot in this scene.

In Arnold Render Settings:

1. Add an Atmosphere Volume.
2. Tweak the density, scatter, and height.

The goal is to make lights “bleed” into the space. It softens the whole look and wraps the scene in haze. These are the parameters I used:

Now it's time to bring the scene to life. A normal alley is scary enough at night, but to really put some emphasis on it, we can tilt the buildings 5-20 degrees, choosing whichever makes the scene look the least forced. The tilting of the buildings is also crucial for the spotlights in the buildings. When you tilt the buidling, that's when the lights can pierce through the fog and hit the street, creating that feeling of being watched with a spotlight on you. Compound this with the lights coming from multiple buildings and the scene comes to life quite nicely

Once the scene has been built, it’s time to add a camera to create a flythrough animation 🎥. This will help visualize how the entire scene looks from the perspective of someone walking through the street.

For this step:

1. Add a camera to the scene.
2. Set keyframes at different points in the timeline to control the camera’s movement through the space.
3. Ensure the camera transitions smoothly between locations to create a fluid, immersive experience.

If you need a more in-depth guide on achieving smooth camera motion, I found this tutorial helpful.

With the camera added to the scene, the final step is to render the images of the scene from different perspectives, and to render flythrough animation 🎥.

I'm quite pleased with how the image renders came out. I think the light falls on the street perfectly to create the desired effect. As for the flythrough animation, I think it's so cool to see how the entire scene changes as you move through it. It was definitely a perspective that I feel validated the use of the concepts I tried to implement throughout the project 🔦💡.

To be honest, this is one of the pieces I’m most proud of so far. Not just because of how it looks, but because of the meaning behind it. The core idea and symbolism throughout this project come from personal experience—growing up in places where safety isn’t always guaranteed. That reality shaped how I approached the design, the lighting, and the overall mood of the scene. 🔐

On a lighter note, I really enjoyed working on this. It gave me the chance to dive deeper into cinematic techniques and made me realize how powerful lighting can be when telling a story visually. I experimented a lot, from expressionist influences to the way light escapes from the buildings—it was all intentional, and it taught me a lot about visual storytelling. 🎬

This project also pushed me technically. I built nearly everything from scratch so I could control every element, and in the process I got more comfortable with Maya, Arnold lighting, and scene composition. More than anything, I learned how to use design to communicate a feeling, not just a structure. 🛠️

If you’ve made it this far, I hope you enjoyed seeing the process and that it gave you ideas for building your own expressive, story-driven scenes. The tools are one part—but how you use them to create a mood, a question, or even just a strange atmosphere—that’s where the real freedom is. 🌫️

~ Iloke