I love the reflections on the marbles. Seeing the sky in the marbles is simply great.
Now let’s think about what would be a suitable background for such a gathering of marbles? A sky wasn’t bad at all. A wooden box? A cardboard box? Some parts of the pavement?
No, I used to hold them up and looked through them into the sky, fascinated by the kaleidoscope of light. Perhaps you did that also, Harleynut, when we both were young 
?
So a sky is a really good solution.
So after i tried to upload my progress before some days and my internet refused to upload it, now i have some time to do this in the end 
Played around with some different environments and decided for an outdoor scene in the end.
Here are my two nicest shots i guess, which one do you like more? Or are both not worth talking about and the beginning scene was better?
I know that are some untypically environments for playing with marbles but to take a shot with a photo i think they are good.
I haven´t thought that the difference is such big but now i know better.
Thx for the tip guys!
Topper
P.S without any post-pro
I like the top one the best by far… You see the sky and trees reflected nicely in some of the marbles.
The only thing that looks odd, is now, you have this group of marbles… that are together like they would be in
a container or on a table… but they just kind of seem to be floating there to me…if that makes sense.
Well I’d still prefer a simple sky 
but next to that I would take the first one of your last renders. What I find irritating in the second render is that I don’t know what the background shows. And I like the reflections on the marbles of the first render better.
That said, good work, especially the texturing. Now you should take the render you like the most and render a noise free image just for the simple joy of a goooood render. :eyebrowlift:
The first has better reflections. the second has a nice warm feel. but overall i’d go for the first. I know what Harley means by the ‘floating’ feel though. Not sure how you would solve that though.
What i think you should do work on is a photographer. It seems odd to me that you can’t see the one in the marbles. If it were me, i would find an image of a photographer and cut him/her out in gimp. then add him/her to a alpha plane and pop him behind the camera.
It may look rubbish, but it may add something.
