I've been working away on the environment, adding in some more props, tweaking the lighting and inserting some foliage. I've been experimenting with 'Xfrog 4' a vegetation/flower plugin which I received free on a disc with a copy of CG World magazine. Its much quicker than building the plants from scratch and uses a series of Alpha maps and stem curves to create some nice looking plants. Ideally I would have created these from scratch using planes, but this is much more time-efficient.

Next up, I'll be revisiting my time machine, and setting up the next half of the scene (the blackness in the background of some of the shots below) which will be more industrial and will contain heavy machinery as well as ultimately the machine itself. I still have a lot to do, but over the last week or so, progress has been quite quick and I'm hoping to pick up the pace once more.

I've also tested a quick Depth pass on the last image below, which I think adds a much more realistic look to the camera and makes things more atmospheric, this will be used on all the shots.