Ok, I’m easily ammused. I know this is simple, but I thought it looked kinda cool. I don’t feel like I’m getting the lighting quite right. I’ve spent hours moving lights around, changing textures and playing with nodes, all for a toilet paper holder, and I’m enjoying every minute of it, just wich I had more time to spend with it.
I love playing withRay mirror like this
Add a pressure relief valve, a couple of pipes, a water level sight gage, some controls and pressure gauges, and you’ve got Steam Punk!
Seriously, good job. Lighting is hard to do in Blender Internal. If it’s in a bathroom, chances are there would be multiple lights sources to reflect (even if the bathroom had only a single lamp, the reflection from the mirrors in the room would provide more light sources.)
Your shadows seem… too sharp. Gives bit disorienting feel.
That is so cool!
Did you try ambient occlusion? There’s a new feature in 2.46 that let’s you approximate the ambient occlusion, removing noise, but it’s not as accurate, and has strange results when multiple objects are near each other. It’s a little hard to tell, but are you already using it?
@Orinoco - What a great idea, some tubes, hoses, a guage to tell you how much tp is left, a little steam valve - I’m on it… 
@Eradicor - After doing some research (sitting on my toilet staring at my own tp holder) I see what you mean, so I softened the shadows up a bit and added a shadow that is from the light reflected off of the opposite wall, I figured the closest lite would have the sharpest shadow, but it might still be a little sharp.
@YellowLambo - I do have AAO set it adds the nice shadow around the base of the holder, and brightens up the shadows quite a bit.
What I hate aboutt this picture is the reflection in the holder (the worlds most boring bath room) but even being boring, the walls just don’t look right. How do I get a good looking white wall, instead of dark wall with bright spots. my mataerial is white with just a little grey texture - could it be the bump map?
It’s the bump map.
Things to try:
in the map input panel, increase x, y and z size parameters, from 1 to something like 30 or 50. You’ll still get a texture, but it will appear more uniform without seeming like slick plastic.
You could also try reducing nor in the map to panel from .5 to a lower value like .2
In the Shader panel, increase ref to 1.000. You might also want to add some emit. Keep the emit value fairly small (~0.10) or the wall will look like it’s backlit.
Orinoco - I tried all of those things, some helped, some didn’t. I think I’m going to start over with all of the lighting, start with the walls and work my way to the tp holder. Here’s a little update.
Coming up next… the steam punk version…
Nice textures on it! You might want to add a bit of thickness to it though. Looks good though!
Thanks Dudebot13. It does have a little thickness, it’s just hard to see because of the lighting, which I’m going to completely redo.
you should have a dude reaching for it after a massive shit and finding no paper. Then enter it into BWC ‘a moment in time’.
The key to such a piece will be the expression on the face of the shitter.
Maybe you could even just have a few fingers reaching into the shot and a reflection of the look of horror in the chrome?
… 
still haven’t had a chance to redo the lighting.
try putting a plane overhead with a high emit value, so its reflected in the toilet holder. should make it look very shiny
Allrighty, I think I’m making progress. What do you think?
Extrude all faces of the roll, scale down…
I’m not sure I understand. Are you suggesting I extrude the faces of the tp roll and then scale down those faces? Or do you think the tp roll needs to be smaller relative to the holder?
The cardboard is infinitely thin.
He wants you to the first, in order to add some thickness to the roll.
Select All (A) press E>Extrude, then Right Mouse Button to cancel translation. Instead of scaling, you will use Shrink/Fatten with Alt S.
Also, I am seeing some polys on the edges of your objects. Try adding an EdgeSplit modifier and then a Subsurf modifier. The EdgeSplit makes sure that the sharp edges remain sharp, and the Subsurf smooths the rest. Set Smooth just gives the illusion of smoothness, but the outline is still angular; Set Smooth is a good compliment to Subsurf.