Incorporated most of your kind suggestions: 1. Added age and scratches to the hammer head. 2. Changed spec halo colors on the head and nails. 3. Turned on blurry reflections. 4. Changed light colors to warm florescent colors. Also: Added a driven nail to break up the flat plane the objects are sitting on. I think this fools the eye into seeing a little more depth. Madmax: I didn't change the wood texture because I wanted it to look like unfinished plywood, and also I wanted to use only Bryce procedural textures to make it more of a challenge. This was my second attempt at a new render. The first one came out with a weird artifact(see below).

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Oh, and I turned the shadows off for the left hand light.

Tjohn, You must have gremlins in your computer. :) That tapped in nail is really awesome, it's about the first thing I noticed. I agree it helps add depth. I like these nails much better, they look more like the nails I've used. The hammer looks a lot rougher and older too. Something about the handle of the hammer puts me off of thinking it's a photo, but I can't quite put my finger on what the problem is. One other little problem, the second nail up from the bottom on the left of the picture has a slightly messed up tip. I can see where the cone breaks off from the cylander. I think you are getting awfully close to realism here. Well done. Lin

Lin: I see what you mean, but the nail is only messed up in the "gag" version, not the "real" one. This is weirding me out, because I "plop" rendered the Eyebis into the pic, I didn't rerender the left side of this pic at all (hums Twilight Zone theme).

TJohn this looks realy great. The only thing we can point out for some improvement is the end of the hammer handle. It looks a bit edgy. When you get it more round your image is close to perfect ;-)

Hey, great job! But I have to tell you, that pic looks ultra fake with the gremlin in it. ;) OK, seriously. If I were doing this, I would do a few things to make the objects a bit more convincing. First, if you can smooth our that hammer head just a touch, I think that would be a great help. Also, the nails are just a little lacking. I see them and know that they are nails, but there are a few picky details that flag them as a render. Here are a few of those nit picky details: nails don't have conical tips. They actually have more chiseled tips, it's a subtlety, but I think it will make a difference. There is also a little texture (grooves and what not) on the sides of nails. Also, I think that if the heads were slightly rounded (using a torus around the cylinder), you'd get a good result. I attached a photo of actual nails, and of a nail I made some time ago. I know, I'm being really anal. The only reason is because you said that you're shooting for photo realism. Photo realism is a real bear just because the shear amount of detail involved! I might also enter the sky lab and turn down the shadow intensity just a little bit. I really like the nail that is partially driven into the wood, It really helps the image a lot! I'd love to see it rotated a bit more towards me so I could see more of the head though. At the angle now, it looks like it's driven into the wood crooked, and I think it would show more depth if it were rotated so that it was perpendicular to the wood plane. I like the simple concept. I like tools. I think that the wood is really nice. And, I really admire your ambition to go for photorealism -- with only procedural mats! That's quite daring, and I think it's awesome. And, of course, who wouldn't love the eyebis? Although if that were my work area, there may be smashed eyebis. As cute as it is, it would scare the crap out of me if it were real. ;)

It's good, but the problem is that the ambience is too high and the shadow is too uniform. The more you get beneath the hammer, the less light there is, and therefore there should be gradual darkening of shadow. The single light source and high ambience means that there's the same amount of light directly under the hammer as at the edge of the shadow, which isn't what happens. Here's a quick render to show what I mean (it took about 4 minutes). The shadow is not all one shade. The more "hidden" and area is the less light will get to it, hence the graduated tone from light to dark. I think that's why your hammer handle looks "weird". Having said that, I might be mistaken as I recently hit myself on the head with an axe.

Unfinished plywood has texture in the form of bumps (non-smooth). I would also try to sharpen the knots, the texture you use is a bit too on the blurry side. It should be as focused and sharp as all the other items in the FOV. The other issue is the bottom end of the hammer handle. It seems too faceted. need a smoother mesh or some post wrk. Definitely getting there.

Attached Link: http://perso.club-internet.fr/lemog/lemog_textures/acc_textures01.html#

I've seen that gremlin around the place - but where does it come from? I want to play with it too..... Nice nail, btw. I think something that would help you achieve photorealism is a bit more bump on the wood - it looks a bit like formica the way it is, rather than wood with a texture. I found a wonderful texture resource at the link above - do investigate it - I'm addicted to the textures from there!

i dont whant to hurt you but, thats not even close to photorealism, a hammer head does not look like that, its made of metal and not specular stone, to get that aged look add rust, that sould be bryce5 if u use dof so why dont u use the soft shadows option? why dont u add a texture to the nails? perhaps there is one but to me they look flat grey= not photo real. and for one last thing if you did show the end of the plywood or the heriozon and then added some more dof it would be more "Real". and a smal trick could be to make it B/W and add grain.

Greetings, If you are interested, i did a wood texture that might make an interesting handle - using layered procedurals. In the image - the top half is with normal anti aliasing. The bottom is how it would look if aa was turned off. BR4 file is about 25K zipped if you are interested in taking it apart and seeing how this was done... Might not be any better then what you have already - but might give some ideas for other texturing projects. If you want it IM me an email address... and i think the scene is looking good but there is always improvements - all work is a work in progress till you tire of it.......... Best, hewsan

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=266082&Start=1&Artist=tjohn&ByArtist=Yes

Thanks for the great suggestions. Several artists ask about bump maps. Believe it or not there are bump maps on every single object in the pic. With a size reduction to 800 x 600, a little detail was lost. Here is a link to the 1024 x 768 version in the gallery (I think it makes a good desktop pic). I think the textures on the plywood look pretty much like the surface of rough unfinished plywood, at least the way I remember it, but my memory isn't as accurate as it used to be, so... There is a Brycean 5 dof blur, a subtle one, perhaps, but look at the back, and you can see the blur. Maybe this is also feeding the comments about blurriness of some textures. Well, a very wise person known only as "hewsan" once told me, "all work is a work in progress till you tire of it." Truer words were never written. But there's a good chance I'll return to this image to tweak on it some more, I do that a lot. And I'm saving this thread so that when I do I'll have some good suggestions for improvement. Thanks all! Oh, I almost forgot about Eyebis (the Gremlin). I'm glad so many people like him (it?). I've been drawing Eyebis since grammar school (you see, I've always been like this). His first 3D incarnation was on the Amiga with a program called Imagine. The latest one is 100% Bryce5 with metaballs, spheres and cones. I like him so much I use him as a sort of mascot on my thumbnails in the gallery.

I think johnpenn's right about the nails, and I use my hammer alot when building bases for my assemblages and crates to ship my art work. So, to put my two cents in and as a reference, this is a hammer that my Dad gave me in 1970, it's seen alot of action, it takes alickin' and keeps on tickin'...:)

Wow, I just noticed it has writing on it!