Tips on Photo realistic rendering w/Cycles Thread

Hey, all!

I've been messing around with Blender 2.62's Cycles rendering engine seeing what I can do with photo-realistic rendering. Below are two of my tests, let me know what you think/ what suggestions you might have on how to improve as this is my first time using cycles. I have a few more examples on my moddb page as well.

I dont think moddb is a good place to post his kind of stuff .... Try polycount or cgsociety.

Now... Even thought im a tech artist in real life, rendering isnt my specialties but i can already tell you that you have an issue with the glass shader being too dark( same thing with the water)

On he render lighting side: its kinda grainy.

Overall I think its a good try for a first render .... Hell i coulnt do better but then again lets talk about bones, matrices and transform and ill be your man

Hey Andy, a great place to post this and get suggestions and such would be over at blenderartists.

(As long as we're on cycles, lower the amount of bounce to 6 for a bit of speed, add around 400-600 more samples for a clearer image, and add a higher resolution to the water, then bake it and render. You also may want to move around or use multiple light sources at lower settings with a tiny bit of AO on the smooth all the lighting out. That way it's less harsh on the wood texture. The nodes and such you'll have to play with yourself. With that you'll be on the road to realistic rendering.)

Although, like cas said, I wouldn't Suggest using indie DB for this kinda stuff.

Yeah, we rely on ingame volumetrics and particle effects so we find such assets pretty boring. But to cheer everybody up here is Garry's Mod with barrel physics:

A classic.