Finally done! (at least until I pick it up again someday - still want to do a table but that will take more practicing)
Thanks for everyone’s C&C’s! I’m very happy with the input-driven end results.
C.
That is great. I wold lower those triagles so they are level to the board.
thats an awsome glass material could you send me the settings in a pm maybe? nice work on everything keep it up man
Good work and clean final render.
I’m still interested in knowing what your system specs and render times are. Is there any chance we can see a screenshot of your yafray settings, and your glass and liquid settings?
Sure, I don’t mind sharing the yafray settings…
Please don’t take this personally, but I worked extremely hard, and spent two weeks tweaking the materials to get exactly the right feel for what I wanted… so I’m not quite willing to part with my material settings. I really do understand where you’re coming from, having felt that way at times myself… and I’m torn, truly, but the selfish side of me is winning out.
System:
AMD 2700+ (something like 2.4GHz)
1 GB RAM
Render took about 5 hours - at 2560x2048 pixels (1:1 aspect)
As for the triangles (bars) I didn’t want to lower them because I wanted to make them stand out and show some edging, with subtle emphasis on the edges. I have a board with leather that protrudes in such a way that doesn’t hinder placement of chips, so I thought it safe to leave them.
Thanks for the kudos!
C.
I understand completely. Thanks for the settings, specs and render time. I wanted to know what to expect if I put together a scene with similiar settings on my system (AMD 1.4 GHz, 1GB RAM). Man I have to upgrade!
Actually, by reading that PDF by jandro (illuminating with YafRay), it isn’t too hard to get really nice renders w/o setting everything so high that it’d choke a mainframe. Only when I push the AA harder do I get longer than a few hours, and usually more like ten minutes or so.
But, we’re quickly getting off into General Posting territory. PM me for details.
Good luck!
g.
Great work, man! You’ve definitely got the glass material down. BTW, is it safe to mix liquor and backgammon? I know its a given with poker, and optional with bridge, and I know it can often turn dangerous when combined with chess… but I don’t know the rule on backgammon. 
In backgammon, the danger is in accidentally mixing the chips with your fritos and bean dip. That, of course is in Stage 4 of drinking…
Never been there, so I wouldn’t know. 
Neat as in neeet nitto neaaat!
Arnaud
darn i was loking forwrd to that glass but oh well i can try myself anyone know a good glass tut i’ve tryed some and the glass looks foggy i used the one in the blender book and didn’t look good
How do you get the liquid inside the glass? It that a separate mesh?
jaycun -
Aha! Fun stuff… 
The technique is conceptually simple, just takes a few practice runs to get a good feel for it. The simple answer is yes, a separate mesh.
you get liquid inside of a bottle by ctrl-d of the bottle (dupe it). Move the dupe to another layer. Now in editmode (and set so you can only select outside surfs in solid mode) select the outside verts and delete them. Then switch back to txparent mode (hit z-key again) and you see just the inside walls of the vessel.
Now you can take off the top half, top third, top 3/243th, whatever your mesh will allow, and then fill that open top face with shift-f.
Now texture it however you want, give it a material and index, and move it back to layer 1 without moving it. Viola! Liquid-ey stuff.
Some will say you need to scale it down slightly due to intersecting (or coincident) surface artifacts, but so far I’ve dodged that bullet, and not scaled - and had decent results.
C.
Well, looks good, but it’s not finished imho.
The table needs definitely a texture as well as an environment, you should also improve your camera setup. A more interesting POV would be fine.
The glass is good, and the perspective (from last time I saw this pic) is better now too
One crit - the caustics seem to be pretty bright for a scene that doesn’t really seem all that lit up. I mean they are way bright, but yet we see no other specular highlights that come close …
-niko