Based on Helen Searle painting. Still working on shaders and textures. C&C welcome as always. And before someone points out the flat peach, it’s saturn peach.
Awesome!
I found your reference image and you changed the style from rotten to pretty fresh fruits, but as you said, it’s only based on the painting. The marble has too much gloss imho, but that’s only a matter of taste, I think. The grapes are marvelous.
Love it!
I like how in the Helen Searle painting, the lighter tones of the fruit and Champagne frame the the darker fruits. Maybe rearranging the leaves and pulling out the camera slightly could achieve this effect. Also some rim lighting would look very nice and separate the dark grapes from the background as well as enhance sub surface scattering if you decide to include it in your grape shader. Also an creative alternative to the wasp as a focal point would be interesting too 
I hope the full scene explains reduction of decay in comparison to the original art 
Thanks for the feedback!
The final test render is here (full res, 1.5k samples). Now I need to fix couple of things that occurred in the final resolution and hopefully I’ll call it quits. It shows some considerable noise now but 3k samples in the final render should do the trick. I think it’ll work with just a slight compositing as it is now. Any thoughts?
Any thoughts?
Yes 
First of all: great!
But now, that you added the medicine and this insect, your image not only starts telling a story, but also starts to be a riddle. What purpose does that medicine have? There must be a human who needs the medicine? What is it that makes the insect to care about the pills?
It shows some considerable noise now but 3k samples in the final render should do the trick.
There are possibly other options to get rid of the noise, if 3k samples bothers you. Do you use a HDRI for lighting? I agree with rider_rebooted that a little rim lighting for the grapes can enhance it. And I think that the glossy spots on the grapes are to sharp now. Tiny glossy spots are also known to cause noise under Cycles.
Personally I think it would be a shame to stop just yet. The modelling and textures etc. look fantastic and the big ugly cockroach is a wonderful twist! It just seems a little too dark and some extra time spent on the lighting will take it from good to great in my opinion!
p.s. If this is “anti-decay” the brown on the leaf doesn’t really fit
I don’t like to verbalise the symbolics but it still leaves some room for interpretation.
Searle’s still life with champagne shows a lot of decay. My mutation is much more alive and the hint for being so would be prozac pills on the side. Roach is something repulsive and threatening. It climbing on the pils is intended to cause negative connotation (basically grose the hell out of people ;)). In other words pills can make things seem better but they are also kind of creepy.
As for the visual part, light reflections and lighting is what bothers me the most at this point and I’ll try to take it up a notch. It still seems to lack that noble softness that is so characteristic for old paintings.
Peach shader is also something I need to work on.
I think fireflies are inevitable since almost every material has some glossy nodes in them, the only solution I can think of is to push for more samples. I already pushed filter glossy to the limits and I don’t want to use depecle.
Interesting, the cockroach itself connotes “life” to me in that its one of natures survivors.
I agree but it has a different tone to it, it’s not life like in case of blooming flower, it’s life at all cost, in sort of creepy way.
Who am I kidding, no break for me
I tinkered with lighting and compo and I think I nailed it, full render will show if it works.
You were kidding me, because I didn’t expect another update today ;).
I think I nailed it, full render will show if it works.
Looking forward to seeing the full render.
I think I’m satisfied with the outcome. I’m not sure about more glossy version, it might be fine but after 2 days fighting speculars I might be too cautious about it.
Final thoughts please
Hi yazjack, in my opinion the upper one is better. The highlight in the lower one on the right grapes is too much. Sorry to say that, but I think the best green grapes have been in your first image. I didn’t recognize that in your last images: Did you change the stalk at the left to black intentionally? To have some additional decaying? If the stalk is that dry, the fresh grapes doesn’t fit well. Perhaps this is a material error?
But overall I really like it much. Nice work! Would like to hear other opinions.
I fought with those grapes from the beginning, went through like 10 different shaders and just couldn’t get them to work with the lighting. On the other hand real life grape doesn’t show much sharp reflections nor sss when light from the direction of the camera so they are quite accurate. So that shader is IMO the one that worked the best with the scene.
The dark stalk kind of came out in compositing, but i kind of like it contrasting with the bright grapes.
Thanks for all the time you spared for sharing your observations about it, that helped a lot!
Apologies, I now understand that you were intentionaly using low key lighting for dramatic purposes and to contrast with the original
I agree with Minoribus that the grape shader in your first image looks the best, but only in a photorealistic sense. The later images (and my favourite is the top image of post #14) look far more painterly.
The brown on the lowest leaf still doesn’t make sense to me but I guess thats open to interpretation
Congratulations Yazjack, a work of art in its own right!