Here is the last frame of an animation I’ve made:
Can I get some feedback on the layout, materials and lighting?
It’s rendered in Yafaray.
well, it looks very tasty, except for the opaque blue ones.
Ah good 
just for the opaque blue-ones, i’m gonna texture it into rainbow coloured - classical lollies.
don’t quite know how to do that yet…
Great job! looks very pro except for there is too much light reflecting off the “l-i-p” in Lol lip op. Sorry if I am unclear, I don’t know how to describe it better.
Oh right yes, i get you.
A bit too shiny there 
Thing is i had to make the light bright to get rid of the shadows. If I use AO or photon mapping, the animation would never get made. 3mins per frame for 600 frames
For rainbow colors, check into colorband ( texture based ) and color and spec ramps ( material based ). A blend texture with colorband would probably be the best way. Of course, it could also be done quite easily with an image texture.
ok, thanks
will try that when i get time
The final frame, now textured…
Comments?
It looks delicious! Minor quibbles: to me, the shade of the brown “L” is a bit of a mismatch with the rest of your palette. The letter “i” appears much brighter than the rest of the letters. It pulls my “i” to it before anything else. After looking away and looking back at the piece, I’d add that the lighting on the “op” at the end isn’t quite as strong as the lighting on the other letters.
Looks very nice to me. I like your choice of colors. Seems like too many of the lollipops are pointing in the same direction for them to have just been randomly dropped, but maybe that’s what you were going for.
TY for the comments guys. Much appreciated.
@Mr Jameson - yes that is what I was going for. I find that when I had it completely random, not many ended up on the screen on the final frame.
@callmeishmael - I will change the lighting setup now. The L was originally red, but I thought it might clash a bit with the red lollipop, hence I changed it to orange. But I’ll see if I can change that too.
That is a delicious render :yes: Good stuff.
Just wondering, what are those white squares in the top left corner?
Meshlights
And after 30mins of tweaking the lights - I’ve given up. I can’t seem to get the same results but less illumination on the ‘i’ and more on the ‘o’ and ‘p’
Either they produce shadows - which I don’t quite want, or is too dark, or is too bright…
sighs I reckon I’ll have to stick with the existing set up then…
You could reduce the amount of specularity on the l, l, and i. Did you try that?
Actually, I might have partially fixed it.
Except the render time is now twice as long because I used 2 area lights instead of the previous 1.
Working to reduce the render time now
Dang. I’m such a noob. No i haven’t.