Here is my latest work. I would appreciate some critiques, and maybe a solution to the artifacts on the lamp posts.
The area around the table is too dark. The shadow of the table seems wrong to me. I don’t notice any artifacts on the lamp post. Other than that it is coming along nicely.
i agree, some work needs to be done with lighting:
- the shadows on the blocks are pointing in a different direction to everything else
- the shadow on the table is pointed at a different angle to the shadow of the window
also the blocks dont look balanced correctly (the one at the top)
on the lamps, i think you might want to check for doubles - check you haven’t got two objects there, and try using “remove doubles”
and finally, i dont know what it is, but you might want to try changing the lampshades.
other than that it looks really good, materials and textures are great.
Yeah the shadows kind of skew the room a bit. Not sure now this is lit, but in some way the lighting/shadowing dosen’t appear how it is supposed to by the way the room is set up. As far as the artifacts, recalculate the normals of those objects. If it was already done, is there a possibility of duplicate geometry?
This looks like it has a good deal of promise! Besides the lighting issues other people said, I would recommend applying a bevel to the window. If you have a bevel already there, then you might want to turn down the size of the bevel, as the infinitely sharp corners really detract from the reality of the scene.
Besides that, great work! Put a few magazines on the table and maybe a drink glass or something, and you’re in great shape! =D
Dan
It´s details…
I´ve never seen a window with such a bold frame.
The pillow has no folds.
The lamps have no cables.
It appears to be bright day outside, yet the room is dark and the puny lamps make more light and shadow than the dayslight entering the room.
The composition is not good : the picture should be placed higher over the sofa, the table shouldn’t be that close to the sofa cause it makes your pic unreadable, the eye can’t make a difference between them.
The lower part of the pic is too empty and the window is too thick and myabe too big.
Keep it up
Thanks for your critiques! I’ll work on it.
Here is a new rendering with the window redone and some better lighting. However, although I intended the lamps to be on they appear to be off. I decided I’d post it anyway. Any recommendations on how to light the shades? Also notice the artifacts on the floor lamp.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15480374/Living%20Room%20Lamps%20Off.png
Well the lamps being off makes alot more sense now that the sun is actually illuminating the room 
The window looks MUCH better now, it’s not a massive 12 inch piece of wood waiting for some careless person to crease their head against >.<
The problem everyone thought was normals on your lamp instead seems to be samples in your glossy reflection, they either need to go WAY up or you reflection needs to come WAY down. (I usually use glossy at .9 values, any lower than .8 and you need 30+ samples for it to look good, which is way to long to be rendering anything that only takes up 200 pixels of your finished image)
As was said before, some wires coming from the lamps and a few more creases in pillow/sofa would take this to the next level, but the lighting problems are gone, and I personally prefer the lamps being off since it IS a bright day outside and really brightens up the room. no sense wasting electricity aye?
The toy blocks could use a slight noise texture to make them more consistent with the rest of the scene as well, but the whole thing is coming along now. keep up the good work!
Thanks, I’ll work on it.
much better than when i first saw it 
i still think some of the shadows (blocks sofa and table) are pointing the wrong way - the window is on the left, and they are pointing left.