Trying to enhance realism of my renders by implementing hdri and better material settings.
There is lot of realism in the image.
Here are some things that seem
to make it look not realistic to
my eyes:
Wood does not have wood color in it.
Too much pumb mapping if there is pumb
on the wood.
Shadows are not consistent, down left is
the best shadow.
Some unsmoothed polys on the glass jar/glass.
I just wanted to point out that wood that has been weathered can look quite dark almost a black color.
There, I adjusted material settings for wood and added new texture channels:
Its a nice image.
some crits might be that the wood has a bit much in the specularity, perhaps turn it down a bit? wood that has been weathered often will have a dull surface finish to it i have thought, and this makes the wood look almost metallic with all of the grays and silvers in the scene.
also, what is with the lip of your glass? is it silver also? it looks cool, but the silver ring on the glass seems odd. perhaps try just plain there?
otherwise looks good, and i love the wood texture!
Select your glass container object and “Set Smooth” there are some definite faces that you can see in the renderings, both of them. The wood looks sunbleached but has way too much spectra, which makes it look petrified. Also, are you only using the HDRI as a light source or is there another lamp in the image as well?
Reduced bump mapping, set hdri as a light source (and not as object texture as before), light’s are still a problem… or are they?
great work 
as i have been experimenting with HDR with no positive results please post a tutorial some where on how to use hdri
for the old wood, I’d leave the specularity, wood does get shiny when it recieves foot traffic, years of oiling and compression. the wood looks to me like its’ well used. Wood recently cut has little specularity, but old wood, like the edges of the arms on an arm chair will be worn and shiny reflective some how.
WHat is the point of using sphere balls? Are you too lazy to actually model something? 3 spheres and a plane with a texture is hardly worth anyones time. Model something, anything!