I was bored yesterday so i fooled around with light domes and textures, came up with this, just a test render with a lot of noise but gives the general idea. Amorphas are free stuff i found over the net.

And here's the postworked version. I always try to postwork the test renders to see how the final one will look like. Now i'm thinking, which one is better, the original {which would be rendered with better options once i'm done playing with it} or the postworked misty thing? Oh and any suggestions and comments are more than welcomed.

I like the first one because of the clarity (I'm a fiend for sharpness) and the colors (I'm a blue boy.) Just up the contrast (most likely use levels or curves in post-work) and fix a few textures and It'll be even better than it already is! I think if you wanna get some of that glint off the gold you should do a few very light flares and some light glow, but leave the blue floor sharp and haze free. I'd also like to see this with a depth-of field blur. If you've heard about the global reflection dome technique (sometimes referred to as hdri) I suggest adding that and making the objects a little bit reflective. If you haven't heard of that you can do a search for "hdri" in the forum and you are sure to find lots of info. Nite!

I really like the 1st one, but I think you may have a problem. Assuming that you created the big 'vase' in the middle, how did you apply the texture? This kind of thing is made by rotation, if it's clay - the potter's wheel, if it's metal - some kind of lathe. My point is that to look 'real' the texture should go AROUND the vase and not ACROSS it.....0.02p

Thanks for the suggestions, i was thinking about trying the hdri thing in here but it came out as an awfuly long render and i hate those, especialy if it's just a "goofing around" image. A 500x370 image with high-rez options takes about 10-11hr to render because of the light dome, and with hdri it takes ages. But expect some pure hdri images from me soon.

The texture can be applied around the vase with cylindrical mapping, but that will only achieve the right affect if the texture has a layered appearance to begin with. I'd be interested to know how the wood texture was done, by the way.

Wood was half painted half taken from a photo, and bumped in bryce.

Yeah, try applying textures either Spherically, or (what I use a lot) Sinusoidal to roundish objects like that. Just experiment with the wrapping types, it sometimes hard to tell what is going to look good with what model. HDRI - You might want to try just using the sun by itself at first, without the lightdome. Does make for faster renders, when you're experimenting with the lighting at first. (But, yeah I realize you're going for a globally lit look). It looks like you are using soft shadows also? That will exponentially increase render times, (but they sure do look better than the hard edged ones). Here's a screenshot of how I set up my HDRI material settings to begin with, then depending on what the scene looks like, I start tweaking it. These setting will let in a great amount of light into your scene and onto your objects, escpecially if you turn off the HDRI's shadows. Just sharing some info, keep experimenting! ;o) AgentSmith

Example with the above settings. AgentSmith