Hi everyone.
I know this is a bit late but I decided to try anyway.
This is my entry for the Blender Guru: The Perfect Holiday Competition.
It is a cruise on a cruise ship.
It’s done in Cycles.
Please criticize.
HD render (500 passes, 47 minutes)
Reference Image
I added in DOF and deck chairs I also extended the ocean and changed it’s shaders a bit. I tried another hdr map and it worked much better.
Please critique
200 passes, 29 minutes.
Great pov! but i have some suggestions ( you asked for 
):
The image is too flat imho: try with a focusing point, a bottle of champagne with 2 glasses on the ground may attract the viewer focus.
Also there are some lighting issues: look at the shadow under the chairs, its totally smoothed, like in a cloudy day, try adding a sun light with a small dimension (depends on your scene dimension, try with a size < 0.1)
The ocean hasn’t any deepness, try with a better shader and color combination: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OhnknjXOh64/S_EpugmN8YI/AAAAAAAAACk/GCtWMinl6DI/s1600/P5150043.JPG
Add some detail like a better modeled lifebelt: http://thebriberyact.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/lifebelt.jpg http://www.foto-blog.it/img/d131_3147.jpg
Try adding some bump to the chairs wood and fabric
I apologize for my bad english
Cya!
Sparazza
I have fixed quite a few things in the render:
Please critique some more.
Here’s the render:
The ocean mesh is not convincing me, if the ocean is calm then the orizon should be almost flat and the waves are ok; if is not calm horizon is ok and waves have to be bigger; i also suggest to increase waves details, if this is not a hardware limit…just my opinion 
Another overnight render.
I did the following:
Please critique.
HD Render(300 passes, rendertime 1:04:05.81)
Now the sea is much better. You can add some more elements in the scene like seagulls and a far island
I would work on the deck texture. It looks a little stretched.
Here’s another render
I did the following:
Please critique
Render (300 passes, 1 hour, 17 minutes, 57 seconds)
Please can you critique
Looks like there’s an issue with the front of the bow as it looks like it has a seam right in the middle.
For me, and this might really just be nitpicking, is the oceans horizon is dead center which cuts your image in half horizontally. If that’s the look you’re after then disregard my statement. For reference look up rule of thirds. There’s a way to show that in Blender in the camera view. Click on the camera icon to the left of the textures button. Under display on the right there will be a drop down menu titled Composition, click on thirds. It’ll help you keep things from being dead center horizontally and vertically. I do like that you’re sailing towards the sun
The one on the railing? I am going to fix that one now.
Yeah that’s what I ment to say the railing. I gotta learn to be more specific 
Fixed that, busy rendering it
Looks good!
300 passes at 1 hour 30 minutes. That has got to be hard on you and rendering in Cycles.
I was doing a lot of background things while it was rendering. I didn’t leave it like the others.
Yeah I do the same thing. Impatiently waiting for the render and the need to do other stuff on the computer at the same time. Sometimes I wish I had a 2nd one to use.
I added in a vignette using the Node Editor. Please tell me if it is better with the vignette or without it.
Thanks
Vignette added
No vignette
To me it’s better with vignette! Is more suggestive.
