They say that this had power once !
Superb. This piece really has class…crisp modelling/texturing (I like the cloth) and atmospheric lighting. A really nice still-life congrats.
How did you get the lighting looking the way it does…radiosity? Perhaps you could share-the-wealth so-to-speak and give us a quick breakdown of the technique?
was it modelled from a real flower (I’m no botanist so I hesitate to call it a daisy-thing)?
Keep it up…
Cool,
like this more than the calyce.
Vase grainy texture is really nice, and flower too is really well modeled
Stefano
Very nice image. It sits in a netherarea between realistic and graphic…it’s too perfect to be real, yet detailed enough to suggest a sense of realism. The lighting and texturing are very good.
Beautiful! Just awestruck at this image. Looks very real. The only thing throwing it off is the stem on the flower. Other than that, it looks like a photo.
Awesome work.
As far as the lighting, did you use the fake GI method with the dupliverted spots, or another method? (/me really wants to know)
BgDM
Thank you guys, I appreciate.
Here’s the low down :
Squirrelt : the ‘crisp texturing’ comes from rendering big size (3000 x 1200) and resizing down to 25% of the original (Lanczos filter in IrfanView). As a matter of fact, I even used OSA 16 when rendering, for the silky quality of it in Blender. All this was necessary. Blender’s OSA alone would have blurred, as can be seen in this example :
news://news.zoo-logique.org:119/[email protected]
Real flower : no as such, although I’ve seen many that were somewhat similar in real life, whatever accidents in Blender’s Way of Modelling happened were my guides. But you can call it Daisy, Betty, Marie… 
The lighting : I generally like the results radiosity produces and despise it at the same time even that of the big guns like Arnold and co. I find them to have a common quality that, although attractive in some sense, is much too restrictive. So I’d rather call what I did not ‘fake GI’ but simply lighting. Of course, lighting in CG, especially for a scanline renderer, has little to do with reality.
The following image gives the gist of what I did this time.
I start with a plane that I subdivide like I think that I’ll need and then I duplivert a light to it. Why a plane ? I understand regular squares better than the faces of an icosphere for example. Also it is much easier to deform predictably, for light placement. In this case I wrapped it (ctrl+w) twice, once in the front view, once in the side view, and removed enough vertices to get the shawdows on the pot well placed. Only standard lights were necessary this time around. To complement, I used a ‘shawdow only’ spot for the drop sawdows (the one at the top of the pot on itself was especially important ; I also put the backdrop and a dedicated spot (layer only)for it, for control sake only, since it still received the general lighting, on the second layer. Not to neglect : a relax cloud texture on the backdrop to easily add some relief.
Overtextured : I’m glad that the eerie feeling was transmitted. I’ve been quite unsettled by an exposition of Duane Hanson works a few years back and I guess that it stayed with me. I could have textured the stem and leaves but I was surprised at how good it already was with a simple color and I wanted to see how long it would be before I couldn’t resis the urge to finish the job.
Hope this very long post was worth the time reading it gents and (possibly) ladies.
nice compositing and the vase looks very well done and realistic
Thanks jeanamontreal for the very in-depth reply…I really appreciate you taking the time to give us such a thorough breakdown and very neat lighting tips there too.
I can side with you a bit on the radiosity-conundrum but for me this look has always been a little beyond my softwares capabilities so it has been something I have sought. I came up with a subtle slant on radiosity or more accurately fakedGI a while back after just upgrading to Bryce5 (pix on my website, gallery 2b http://www.squirreltape.btinternet.co.uk/gallery_2b.htm. I’ve yet to explore the technique further but I know what you mean when you hint at the look being a little limiting. I would like to keep it just as a tool and not let it swamp my work. Kudos.
And I have to agree with s68 on the vase tex…very tactile-looking
Very pretty!!!
You do flowers very well, have you tried any other species? Your lighting looks great, thanks for posting the pic of the set up too so we can see whats goin on buh-hind the sceens!!! Great work, look forward to more so get crackin’!!! hehe
Matt
Blend on, and blend well!!!
It’s my first but I’m fairly confident for poppies, dahlias and orchids. Maybe tea roses but the kind with a thousand petals : hello intersections !
Squirrelt, you have some awsome gallery. To anybody who hasn’t seen it :
go !
Would be nice if you gave a little info on the pics, at least the tools, renderer.
I like best your characters the camel, the cows and the snowman. I don’t care as much for the steel man although it is understandable that he has to ‘steel’ himself before riding that bike ! 
The vase texture ? Should I say it : it’s strucci, nothing else (well, the 7th attempt in fact).
Thanks to all for the nice comments.