Hi. My first ever, serious Cycles render image. Just a simple mug.
36k faces
1600 passes. Full GI with caustics. Dof.
Render time: 1h 50min (CPU Intel i3 @ 2.93Ghz)
Wood texture from CGtextures
hey there, really nice render. 
but it seems to me that the material is a little too glossy, there are some strange reflections going on on the edge of the mug and on the handle. apart from that i really like it!
Yes, a bit overly reflective. But nice modeling!
Thanks guys.
When I look it now, yes it seems to be too reflective.
Maybe the emission light plane is too close to the mug so it causes weird reflections on it… hmmm.
It looks perfect to me. I will have to take another look when I’m on a full monitor, but it seems to me you’ve got the Cycles thing off to a great start. Already you have a key ingredient: patience. Unless you’re riding high atop CUDA, that seems to be the trick.
I think ill put on a pot of coffee in honor of this render, which seems exactly glossy enough for me.
-rking
Mmm…Don’t think so. You may already know this, but I’ll tell you anyway.
Use a mix node, with one material a glossy one, and the other a diffuse. Then, play with the ‘fac’ value, to get the right balance between them. It’s not way overly glossy, just a bit off. I agree with rking, you’re on the right track. 
Yes that´s the setting I´m using. Mix of diffuse/glossy.
Anyway I repositioned and scaled up the light-plane (to get better reflections) and made the mug material less glossy. I think it looks pretty good now.
What you guys think? Should I make the final render from that?
800x800px should be fine since it increases rendering speed when comparing to 1024x1024px.
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Dear tomi,
When you mix diffuse / glossy, do you use a fresnel node? improves the realism by far!
No. I was thinking about that and I think I´m going to give it a go. I need to learn what fresnel actually is and what it do
EDIT: This topic is becoming a WIP, rather than finished, sorry.
Well here is a different version. I think I´m not going to waste anymore time with this so it´s done now:yes:
1500samples. render time: 1h 8min
Full GI , caustics
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That looks WAY better 
Can some one tell me how you plugin in the fresnel value?
does that just require inputting fresnel in the fac?
I dont know if this is the right way of doing fresnel reflections… This is just a random guess. :eek:
EDIT: I´m pretty sure this is wrong…and badly! 
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not really “wow-like” but as a first attempt, it is good enough.
Not quite actually:
