Here is my spin on a beginner’s tutorial for Lightwave. I want to see how well Blender, using the right techniques, can stack up against it’s commercial counterparts. Again I’ve used the pivot point for reflections on the glass bowl and cup, and my apple has made another apperance. All feedback is welcomed.
Simple, but still nice. It would be interesting to see comparison renders between Lightwave and Blender, I wonder how they would stack up.
Hehe, I made an apple too (but not in Blender): http://emtilt.tripod.com/3d/myapple.png (copy and paste URL, dont click)
Thanks for the reply. Looks like an apple is a pretty good object to start out with for modeling and texturing 
looks very nice…but the images lacks some serious shadows…work on that more…
and if you want refcration in the glasses…then you can forget
blenders scanline…use a external render like POVRay, BMRT, Entropy,
3Delight, LightFlow or some other…but it is not easy I can say…
or why not LightWave itself…it has such render…raytracer that is…even Animation Master has it ($ 299)
sorry about that 
well…work on those shadows…and why not
some enviroment mapping …would be nice too 
keep the work up !!
Thanks for the feedback. You hit exactly how I feel on the head. I’ve been fighting to use my GI Template to get better shadows. Stay tuned.
I have a env map on the glass objects, my CubeRes might be set too low(?) The Filter is set to .10 Hmmm…
Regarding POVRay, I didn’t realize its possible to render a .blend file using that application, I have to look into that.
Any other adivce, tips or tricks you have would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again.
check this URL for POVRay:
http://jmsoler.free.fr/util/blenderfile/povanim.htm
and for the lighting and shadows…you don’t need GI for getting
nice lights and shadows…only correct light setup !! and play alot
with the shadow-samples/blur and clipsta of course…all in lightbuttons,
but only spotlights use shadows…
take a look at this misc. site about light setup, I actually has this book:
http://www.3drender.com/light/3point.html
http://www.3drender.com/light/index.html
and check this too:
http://www.3dlight.com/page-softlights.htm
Update after using 3 point lighting and adjusting spot properties etc.:
The glass doesn’t look right… Usually glass is more transparent at a perpendicular angle, and more opaque at a shallower angle. Check out this post by Eric on how to do this (very simple technique):
Thanks for the reply.
You caught me! I was trying to hang on to a env map. I was using a sphere instead of a halo texture (BLEND), and ‘REFL’ for the mapping type instead of ‘NOR’. But here it is after using the method Eric described. More transparent/glass looking (IMO):
http://home.rochester.rr.com/earnest/glassbowl4.jpg
Another thing I forgot to mention is to turn up “SpTr” in the material buttons. This makes it so that, even if it’s totally transparent, there will still be light reflections that are visible. Then also adjust hardness and specularity so that it looks like glass. Glass is a very hard (smooth) surface.
Some thoughts on your glass and 3D in general. One thing I wonder is the purpose of your scene. Do you want a realistic scene or an artistic visually pleasing one. Sometimes as 3D artists we have to find a balance between the two. The reason I’m mentioning this is looking at the 4 versions of your scene I think in some ways the 1st 2 especially bowl number 2 were more visually appealing (especially the glass) than the third and forth ones. One of the reasons why is the env map added warm tones to the cool blues. You can turn the env map down with the color slider button if you want to keep it and yet keep it subtle. These are just my opinions but food for thought as to what you want to achieve.
I like the lighting and shadows in the latter pictures but miss some of the pleasing colors and looks of some of the earlier renders. Keep at it until you achieve the balance that pleases you. I as an artist often consider this question of reality verses creative visual appeal. If I want total reality looking things I’ll use a photgraph but in 3D I’m aiming for realistic looking yet visually appealing. BTW I like your work keep at it.
Paradox
Thanks for all of your replies. They are really helping me understand how to accomplish different things in Blender. My understanding of light and shadow has gotten much better. I will keep working at it.
Paradox, thank you for your feedback. I’m glad you like some of my work.
The purpose of my scene at first was to see if I could make ‘glass’. The blue tint in the glass was to try and duplicate a Lightwave tutorial, but I got rid of it in my last render to help me make it look a bit more like glass. I added the wood floor to give it a more interesting environment. I knew I needed better shadow to ‘seat’ the objects, but GI didn’t work for me. Ztonzy’s post really helped me with lighting techniques! Lack of refraction and the light pool(?) in the bowl is hurting me, but I can address that down the road.
Overall, since I’m a beginner, I’m trying to get things to look as photorealistic as possible using only procedural textures. I have a long way to go, but I’m going to stick to it!
Thanks again.
Well done I like the last one. You are coming along fast.
Paradox
Looks much better now !!