The big scene I'm working on is being mean and keeps showing me something I screwed up after rendering for 30 minutes so after the 4th restart and finding something else wrong I'm quitting for the night.

To make myself feel better I did a quickie of my main character from the scene.  You can't see it here, but she's holding a katana and a chainsaw.  

Quote - > Quote -  

 

 

You need to ensure you have the object you want reflected to be illuminated, I assume you want a reflection like this? http://fav.me/d3i0pqm  (the render is not very good, it was a very early render!) there is a link to the set up in the description. ;)

That's exactly what I'm trying to do and I think I finally have it.  The hard part is finding a place to put the lights so they actualy light what I want but don't show up in the reflection.

1. what size image do you usually render (i.e. 1500X2000)

 2500x whatever it fills in for the shape I've chosen. This gives me some space to crop or compress if needed and still have a sharp image for the average HD screen. I work on a 24" 1920x1080 LED. 

1. for this size if you have a "simple scene" (one model, hair, and maybe a few scant clothes), what is your average kS/s and kC/s.

see my attached image

1. your cpu has ? cores and runs at what speed?

quad core i5 2500k overclocked to 4.4

1. how much ram do do have?

16Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR3

1. on average how many s/p does it take until the image is considered "done" (for example 300 samples per pixel)

500-1000s/p.

1. how long does it take to get to question 5.

a very simple scene like this would be 3-5 hours. A more complex one 15-20 or even more

And a close-up of Emma.  The mass produced models above have blue eyes so I wanted Emma's eyes to stand out since she was once human.  

I want to do an extreme close-up of her eye and have the reflection of someone who's looking at her show up in it.  I tried a quick test and I'm not getting any reflection except for the light.  Any suggestions on how I can get this to work? Would I have to set part of the eye to mirror maybe?

Two more characters for my Emma-514 story, was just getting the design together so I didn't waste any precious computer power rendering until everything was perfect. 

Attached Link: http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/220/c/5/emma_514_by_zeroice013-d5ab9y0.png

I had a bunch of the body turned into lights but it was giving me trouble with lots of noise and slowing the render speeds to a crawl so I still need to go back and mess with that again.   

Took me hours and about 10 test renders to decide on a skin for her since I wanted something realistic with imperfections and not something perfect-super-model looking. I have an extreme close-up that's almost done and I'll post that next.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2355695

Haven't seen any of those Paranormal Activity movies, but they're pretty much the inspiration behind this one. 

More description in the gallery.

Attached Link: http://fav.me/d59j21p

Full size click will go to higher quality on dA.  It always loses so much converting to jpg for the forums. 

Quote - Lux 1.0RC3 is out!

Looks like another nice improvement.  Had a scene running in RC2 at 37 kS/s and 70 kC/s.  Restarted it after installing RC3 and it's moving along at 108 kS/s and 206 kC/s. 

Quote - Very interesting scene.  The little dragon is so cute.  I was wondering if it hurt her sitting on all those rough surfaces.  What is that prop she's perched on?

It's the Worlds of Fantasy: Medieval House from Stonemason.  There's water below that came with the set but you can't see in the scene, and it also had a skydome that I removed and used a Skies of Reality IBL instead. 

Attached Link: http://fav.me/d59ctt6

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/media/folder_236/file_2351940.jpg

Quote - She had been hearing strange noises in the night, so she decided to set up a camera beside the bed.

Click link for slightly higher quality on dA.

Ignore this, just realized it's the wrong one.  Correct version coming later today.  

Attached Link: http://fav.me/d58jy48

Click link for slightly higher quality on dA.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2853507&page=1#message_3961671