Soft Materials + Soft lighting

yeah, now it looks much better :)

Nice books :) The image looks really good. Nice job.

Update: [ATTACH=CONFIG]45834[/ATTACH]

yeah, I'll have to work on the books. They have no rads currently, so they are looking pretty weak. I'll definitely address that in the next shot. If you look closely, the text is backwards haha. The texture maps are unevenly lit so I had to mirror a few of them (totally forgetting that you can't do that with text). I've got some new books (Thanx Aubrey!) so I'll give it a shot with those new textures.

nice work, great materials and lighting ! only the books could use some displacement, they look flat. thumbs up !

Detail Shot: [ATTACH=CONFIG]45831[/ATTACH]

Agreed. It's a weak point. I think the thickness of the material varies too much so some parts are lighter than others. I'll try to address that in the next set of shots.

Very nice shot, and a proper use of DOF. I never like when artist overdo it. The only thing which is not looking good (IMO), is the empty green bottle. but you did a good job. :-)

Detail Shot: [ATTACH=CONFIG]45828[/ATTACH]

Thanks for the comments. Materials: are all arch & design shader with bitmaps from cgtextures.com. Lights: 2 photometric lights (rectangles) that have attenuation mods (waaay faster renders). Settings: pretty stock.. I decreased the fg mult to .8 as I did not want too much light bounced around. Inspiration: I found an attractive image in an EQ3 furniture catalogue so I tried to replicate the feeling by focusing on lighting and materials. I admire how the photographer used studio lighting to isolate the subject (Lola chair) in a residential setting. The dark background bookcase and foreground shadow on the floor frame the chair and direct the eye to the focal point. This makes the composition visually appealing. reference photo: [ATTACH=CONFIG]45826[/ATTACH]

Looks great!

Antoine awesome job! Please share little bit about materials, lighting and post production for all other mental ray enthusiast's. One of the best results I've seen with mental.

Very nice job! I really like the flooring.

Two thumbs up! Love the new texture. Really good lighting.