Dear profanity,

Your render looks realy good already.

Since you have asked for honest feedback and what I am about to say is in order to help and my personal opinion. Do with it as you please.



I agree with Ace Dragon and tc2466 that more samples could help. If rendering takes to long, you can perhapse reduce the number of bounces or something? There are plenty tutorials on doing that.

I also agree with tc2466 that the bumpmapping on the pot could do with some love. It would make the texture of the pot feel more alive and worn. Just a tad, not to much. You could also apply the sharpen node with a very low value (like 0.1). This will sharpen up the textures which usually looks better.

Concerning the pot. In the shadow of the upper edge you can see blokking. I don’t realy know the cause. It could be that your pot doesn’t have enough subdivisions, or perhapse you forgot to turn of flat shading? But the remainder of the pot looks ok, so I don’t realy know where this could come from.

Concerning Bump. I think you overdid the bump on the back wall. I indicated it with an Arrow on the picture I included (if the spam filter doesn’t remove it). Where does this shadow come from? the plaster can’t be that thick?

I like the sunglasses and they bring live to the character. But if you aim for photorealisme, you should avoid that the sunglasses go through the mesh of your cactus. (also indicated, there where you should expect an ear on a human head). You can use the spines to carry the glasses. And about the spines: they seem to lean towards the sunlight in stead of just be even. We don’t have catusses here in Belgium, but I think that they are generaly quite even. Perhapse some who has them in their back yard could conferm/correct this?

The debri on the floor is also realy good and the only remark I have are the three sigaret stubs (is this the correct English word?) in the left lower corner. They are clearly the same and it sticks out.

The image is also intended to look old and that works quite well, but it has like a green veil over it. Everywhere there seems to be a hint of green. Perhapse, but this is something you should just try in the compositor, you could add another color for the shadows. Try some very (very) subtle magenta using e.g. the color balance. Magenta might sound a bit weird, but not if you use color theory since it is the opposit of green, the main color in your image.

And if you realy want to make it look like an old photographe, try adding a subtle vignet.

I think the lighting is realy good. Normaly I would advise to add a bit more fill light, but considering the setup and the very bright sun, the dark shadows seem appropriate.

I hope any of these remarks can help you. You already did a great job, because the image shows a thriving cactus in a deteriorating environment and that is exactly what you wanted to show. But If you want to go from an A+ to an A++, you need to do some more work (but don’t forget your finals, they are important too ).

Best regards Nick