I stayed off the net for most of the day, as it was "International Hackers' Day" and I didn't want to get depressed if any of the sites I visit got hacked! So I gainfully occupied myself in the material editor in Vue.

I was fooling around mixing materials, and mixing components of those materials, and the song "Midnight at the Oasis" came into my head. Since I have a lot of images of ceramic tiles, that's how the image got started. I mixed the components, playing with the "influence of environment" tab, based on elevation only (not slope or azimuth). Eventually got something that looked like it might be the wall of a tiled building out in an oasis somewhere. For the lighting, I darkened the atmosphere, left a bit of ambient light, but not too much (ambient lights have unfortunate effects on Poser materials in Vue), and added some point lights. I wanted it to have the feeling of nighttime, when it wouldn't be so hot outside. Added my figures, and tweaked a lot.

Casbah of the Cats

Did a fair amount of postwork in this, in PhotoShop and PSP. Cloned out a few areas where shadows were strange, painted in a bit of extra hair on the women, adjusted levels a bit to get more contrast.