Well, I'm still undecided between the title of "When the Music's Over" and "End of the Night". I'll go with the first one. So technicalities: The lamp was lathed in 3D Studio. Textured in Bryce, the stand and the wick with its holder modeled in Bryce. The stand is a simple torus with several hundred multi-replicated spheres. The goblet was modeled in two parts in 3D Studio, both imported in Bryce, booleaned, grouped and textured. The coin is a photo of an actual coin, grayscaled and used for a symmetrical lattice. Texture is the photo. Cards were also "modelled" in 3DS, because nothing in Bryce gave satisfactory result. Either too simple or you could see facets. Table is all Bryce, with the texture of my own invention. The bump map was a texture from Animax. Probably the same one that Vasquez used. The spilled wine is metaballs, of course. The flame is the photo of a candle flame that AgentSmith posted the other day. Since he offered it to ... I forget whom ... I took the liberty of using it in my pic. Thanks. Finally, the lute. Aah. The basic body-shape of the lute was modelled in 3DS by a friend, who was later kind enough to let me muddle through the lamp and the goblet by myself. Since the body-shape was an egg, I imported it in Bryce, massacred it with Boolean operations and created the soundbox, as well as the soundboard and its edge. The rest of the lute (and it's almost everything there, only you don't see it) is Bryce. The rose is a lattice, grayscaled from a photo of a real lute rose. The pic was slightly retouched in Photoshop to remove some artifacts and stuff. And lightened a bit. What did I learn? Well, if you use a photo as a texture on a lattice, DO NOT set any bump height, cause you'll get rubbish. And it took me till yesterday to discover it. Oh, better late than never. :-) Finally, this is historic stuff, which can also be considered fantasy. All the stuff on the pic is approximately 15th - 16th century. The coin is an actual Hungarian florin from 1400s. The cards are French from the same period. The lamp was modelled after a Czech glass lamp from 14th century, but has a different wick-holder, which is my own invention. After all, the pic is set a hundred years later. :-) Goblet is something from that period and the lute is modelled after lutes from the late Middle Ages. So the mix makes it fantasy.

Very nice render. Honestly I can't find anything that I would do differently, the lighting and all is great!

It looks great overall, but something about the light reflecting off the goblet is buging me, but I cant place it. Oh well, no big deal, just me nit picking, trying to elevate my desk above all the others(in my mind...hehe) Really great pic, though! Keep up the great work! big_hoovie

Wonderful work of art, Comp,lighting,textures. Warms the soul. I see what big hoove means about the light. there seems to be a straight line of shadow/light not coming from the candle or from behind the goblet. Still leaves mine in the dust, I love learning from all of you. Thanks for your Expressions. Beautiful work Erlik. Rod

Beutiful work! Take care, Jimi

Ah, you mean the thin reddish line on the bottom part of the goblet? It's some kind of weird refraction from the edge of the lamp, just like the lighter area on the lute. I didn't want to remove it. Thanks everybody for nice comments.