But, here it is anyway.
That’s with ambient occlusion and one lamp on. I’m going to texture the thumbtack tomorrow, but the rest I need some comments on. I am not getting my lighting right at all, and would like some suggestions using the angle I have here, as well as any suggestions for the folded paper effect I was going for with the plane (I can’t get it to look ideal). Any other miscellaneous (sp?) hints would be great, I’m still very much a blender n00b.
Thankyou!
-DwaS
You show all the signs of non-noobishness(ambient occlusion, texturing, ect.). Here are some things that I was thinking. What is the message your image is trying to convey? Happiness, sadness, fear, loneliness. Whatever the feel of the image you want try to get that feeling across with camera angle and color. Try renders at different camera angles till you get one you like. Or, even better, if you know the angle you want set it. May I see a wire shot of your paper? it will help with giving advice on a folded effect. Also, the texture you have, “call me” would be much better if it looked hand written. The direction of the main light onto the wall and paper note is not very evident from the image. Try to have one main light source(spot or area lamp) be the main source of light. Also, the wall texture is pretty blurry, is it a wooden wall? Try to find a better wall or wood texture.
Here is the best advice I can think of. Recreate the scene in real life. Just thumb tack a note to a wall. Notice all of the little details that makes it real…like the tiny tears where the tac goes into the paper. try to recreate the shadows that you see and the colors. Ok, good luck it is a good start so far. Think of it as a sketch for your final peice 
If you want to soften the hotspot, you could try a spot light. Move it back a bit and maybe up a bit. Try adjusting the SpotSi and SpotBl sliders. These adjust the size of the hot spot and the cone angle of the light. Also, try the quad button. This should make the light falloff follow the inverse square law, which is how light behaves in real life. Also for the paper, instead of subsurf, you might want to try a curve modifier. You make a curve the shape you want the paper to be, then add a curve modifier to the plane. You’ll need to sudivide the plane a few times. Here’s one I tried, the AO’s a bit noisy, but m’eh.
I used an image texture as well.
Aight, thanks for the advice guys. I didn’t think of using a spotlight, I’ll try that.
If I manage to get my angle right, I’d also like to make the fading out background seem more blurred, is there a way to do that?
Yeah, that’d be achieved with a Depth of Field/Defocus node.
Does this require the input of a specfici f-stop, as in real photography? I have a little experience with that if it does.
Also, fatfinger, I wasn’t aware of the curve modifier - but damn, that function is helpful! Thanks for showing me that tool!
I love this community. 
I haven’t actually used it. 
But the release page is here.
http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-243/composite-defocus/
For DOF, you’ll need to first go into the camera settings panel (select the camera and press F9). In that panel, directly under the Lens setting, there’s a “DOFDist” setting. this is the distance you want the point of focus to be. If you’re not sure of the distance, click “Limits” in the column on the right, and it will show the DOFDist in the 3D view, marked by a yellow cross. Once you’ve got that set up properly, you’ll need to split the view in half and set one of the views to “Node Editor”. In the node editor, click the icon on the bottom that looks like a partially-folded piece of paper. A “Use Nodes” button should now appear, just to the right - select it. Two boxes should now appear, with a link between them. Get rid of that link by dragging the right-hand end of it away from the box it’s connected to. Then, click Add and go to Filter >> Defocus. It should now appear, and the “image” bit will be connected to your scene, the box on the left. Join the image bit on the right of the defocus box to the image bit on the Composite box on the far right. Then join Z on your scene’s box to Z on the defocus box.
Once that’s done, go to the render buttons (F10 in the buttons window) and, under “Anim”, select “Do Composite”. Now you can go back into the node editor and play with the settings a bit, make sure “No zbuffer” is deselected though or it won’t work (in my experience anyway).
Hope this helps:yes:
EDIT: Ah, so there’s already a tutorial on it… Oh well:o;)
No worries dude(withasock) !
Decided to scrap what I had and redo it. Downloaded a new font and added the lipstick, and used the curve modifier. Hopefully will have a finished product by tonight.
Aight, here’s what I’ve got so far. I’m close to calling it my first complete render, as I’m pretty much satisfied with the lighting, camera angle, modeling, and most of the texturing (the tack is supposed to be transparent and I also upped the fresnel value a little bit), but the wood wall still seems a bit off…the only plus side to the way I have it now (with a cloud/wood stripe combo texture) is that it’s supposed to be blurry to keep the focus on the postit note.
I know it’s not perfect by any means, but what do you guys think?
Your thumbtack has much improved since you started this thread, as has your texture on the paper.
Your paper still doesn’t look quite right though – try adding a really small scale stucco texture as a bump map with really small variance. Slight color variations and flecks could make the paper more real too.
I’d ditch the spotlight too. The spotlight combined with the horizontal streaks of your background texture make it look like the camera is panning to follow a piece of paper that’s going a zillion miles an hour to the left.
There are a lot of good free wood image textures online – I’d go with one of those for the background, rather than the procedural wood you’re using right now.
You said you weren’t happy with your lighting. Here’s a really neat exercise. If you have one or two desk lamps (sort of like the ones in the Pixar short), go into a dark room and try to light an object with one lamp – move it around to see what happens. Then add another – light the object with each lamp by itself, then with both. If you do this while you’re doing a three point lighting tutorial, you can learn a lot – if you have a third light, so much the better. You could do this with lights in Blender of course, but I think you’ll get a better intuition with real lamps.
Render with lamps only, then add the AO once you have your direct lighting to your satisfaction. This will fill in the dark spots and tone down the bright spots.
Aight, I’ll work on the tips you gave me - will have a new render tonight.
Aight, here’s an updated render. Changed the wall’s texture, bumpmapped the paper, and edited the camera and lights just a little bit. I know you said to ditch the spotlight, but I personally think the spotlight makes everything look great, and it works with the new texture nicely. Any more critiques?
what happened to the thumbtack? it looks too dark in the middle.
I wanted to know how you rounded the endges on the first one? i’m also very noob
in answer to your question, make a plane, subdiv maybe 2 times, then do a subsurf…probably with a setting of 2 to make it nicely curved. you might want to add set smooth to it as well.
You mean the plastic part, or the metal part?
Compare the 2 images. the metal part is nerley black on the second one.