Hi, Here is an image I'm working on right now. I've got a couple of questions. FIrst off: the lighting, I always have trouble with figuring out how to light scenes. I've been experimenting a little but on my computer this scene, even when quality is dragged far down, takes awhile to render, so testing gets a little tedious.

But my main question has to do with the liquid inside the floating-brain water tanks. It seems that no matter how I set the transparency of the inner liqid, it still comes off as being far too transparant except for the ellipse forming the surface of the liquid. I created the inside shape in the usual manner, i.e. replicating the outer shape, undoing the combine as compound on the cross-sections and then just keeping the full inner shape. (hope that makes sense).

Keep in mind this is an unfinished image. The room still needs a fair amount of "dressing up". The playing cards are blank for now. And some of the limb positioning needs to be tweaked.

Thanks for any and all input.
Cheers,
H&B

For the lighting I can recommend the excellent book - [digital] Lighting & Rendering by Jeremy Birn On the liquid, have you also tried experimenting with the refraction (see the green water shader for an example). I( believe you need to turn on full raytracing for this to work correctly.

I find that using a Multi-Channel Mixer shader is the best way to control degrees of transparency.

I agree, the combination of the refraction and fake fresnel will give you good looking liquid. You should be able to get some good effects from the lamp above where it casts colours onto the table and players. In the render options there is a "light through transparency" option that you will also want to turn on.