Here's something I've been working on for longer than I care to admit. The only object I modeled is the stone box, everything else is from the Carrara content CD, although I retextured everything except the table's wood. The stone box was modeled in Amapi 4.15. I drilled all the holes in the box with a template object. This created way more polygons than I think necessary, but I couldn't figure out how to build the box otherwise. The shader on the box is a multi-level procedural, about four levels deep with various marble mixers. Lighting is a distant light from above - simulating most of the light from the lamp, three bulb lights in the lamp providing most of the shadows and the nice reflection/highlight on the table, and a distant light aimed at the stone box to lessen the shadow on the side facing the viewer. All of the lights have a "blurry noise" gel applied to them. I find that placing such a gel over lights helps dirty them up and removes the sterile perfection usually associated with renderings. I've also applied the "blurry noise" as a mixer to many of the color, reflection, and other texture channels. Anyway, just a little something I've done. - Jasen.

Jasen,
Thanks for sharing your techniques. The picture looks really good, too!

Charles :)