Hey everyone, this is my pretty much my first real project on blender. I’ve dabbled a little in 3d art before, but that is it. Any critique for improvement and realism would be greatly appreciated. If you have a suggestion for me, please include a link with a guide or tutorial on how to implement your suggestion. Thanks! 
Update:
I rerendered one of the shots at a higher sampling and added some new compositing magic.
More Renders
did you add normal maps or bump maps?
the flooring looks too flat and no holes or bumps between the planks
even just a very small offset will make your scene look better
also good work
Blender guru has a few good videos on YouTube
Look there for some info
Thanks! Here’s are my nodes for the floor texture. I used a PBR materials texture tutorial to make it. Should I increase the strength of the normal you think?
It looks pretty good to me.
Look for real photos in google images. The floor of the basketball courts usually is very polished without much spaces between the planks. You could add some smudges (not much) if you want.
Definitely increase the effect of the normal
Also you don’t really need a fresnel.node here as the floor is not curving
Also put the normal map output into the normal input of the diffuse and gloss shaders it will give better results
Uh, the lights look disembodied. Real Lamp Meshes would add likeness to life.
Floor is not curving but the camera is wide angle so you are looking at the floor at multiple angles. So fresnel is needed.
i like it. only the walls seem a little bit repetitive. how about using a prozedural cloud texture to give the overall normal structure a little variation
My suggestions for improving photorealism would be:
I never even thought about adding shoe smudged to the floor. Great idea. I’m going to work on figuring out how to do that.
Great suggestions. These are all PBR materials using his tutorial as reference. I will definitely try to find some better textures for the walls and floor. Thanks.
oh, I didnt notice the node setup, sorry!
I think this is getting near to completion. You guys had a lot of really helpful tips. If I missed anything please let me know. I will probably throw it in to PS for some post processing when I get a chance.
I’m really struggling with this seam. I’ve got the basketball mirrored with merged edges and subdivided. The mesh is perfect, but the render has a hard seam here. How can I fix this, anyone?
You should apply the mirror modifier and unwrap the model again with the sems at the those Black lines.
Or you make sure, that the texture is tileable and Align it so that it starts where the seam is, but I am not sure if this works.
I am sure there is a better way, as I am also still learning.
That was a good idea, but I still have this weird bump in the mesh, like the light hits it differently there. Panning the texture around does not effect it.
Could you share the texture that you are using? It would be even better if you share the whole ball in a .blend file (with the ball texture packed). So users could better analyze the problem.
With no textures on the mesh material, here is how cycles views it.
The seam that shows up in the mesh, doesn’t appear anywhere but cycles.
Can you share the .blend file, jshaffe?
