2 soft lights, all textures procedural. I was trying for a simple photorealism. What do you think?

Wood grain looks good, yet the hammer and nails need better texture, the hammer has some sharp edges, and soften the shadows.(more soft lights) I'm not very good at this yet, although tuttle has done some nice ones and AgentSmith.

That must be a brand new hammer, mine hasn't looked that good in years! needs some age on the hammer, IMHO. Although I'm not much of a nail and hammer person, more of the Dewalt 18v 5/8 reverseable drill and philips screw gal myself...

I like the nail texture. Turn off the shadows for one of the lights...the dual shadows make it look fake. Hammer handle looks good, but maybe the head needs more "weight" to it, such as some nice rich dark steel color. You also need to render with blurry reflections on. Make the specular halo color R150 G150 B150 for the hammer head, and for the nails, R220 G220 G220. Then render with blurry reflections. I would (no pun intented) use an actual wood photo for the plank. Read Angentsmith's tutorial on "adding a stupid amount of detail to a terrain" and apply a real wood texture to it's slightly bumpy terrain you will make.

Attached Link: http://www.castironflamingo.com/tutorial/lightreference/index.html

Hammer handle is great, the hammer head could use a bump map that might suggest some scratches or dents, etc. Try looking at that link. It's from Cast Iron Flamingo, and is a great lighting reference. It will give you different types of light and what values to set your RGB to. Your pic above reminds me of workshop flourescent lighting. Try out different lighting colors, don't be afraid to change them to whatever looks good.

The hammer still looks like it's "floating". Unfortunately, I have the same problem with some of my images... Suggestions, anyone? PS the nails "are" floating. The rim of the head and the very tip both need to be on the surface (wood). Use the orthogonal views to rotate the nails so that both the head and point lie on the tabel surface...

Nails look like they're smack dab on the wood to me, the shadows are open towards the head and taper to right under the tips...but the hammer does look...ummm...not grounded, is it the lighting that does that? maybe only one direction with hard shadows and the other direction as fill light with soft shadows...just a thought

Just put up a new version of this pic in the forum. I had carefully placed the first nail in the Front view so it was sitting against the floor with the rim of the head and the rim of the point flush against the floor. Then I duplicated and moved the copies with the Edit Icons so none of them changed position relative to the floor. Ditto on the hammer, as well. Perhaps it is the double shadow causing it. I've posted a new version with only one shadow of this pic if you're interested.