Hey guys i’m working for an entry in a pxleyes contest please give me any criticisms and advice. 
samples:100
hey, not bad at all but i wonder if some prportions are correct… first of all the lid of your chest seems to be so big that you can fill it only half full ( otherwise the coin would get lost if you trie to open it, yes if one even could close it when it was filled more than half 
Then your gems should have some more variation in form and size …
In the end would not feel lucky about your silver coin material, cause it looks like iron (maybe change color or add more glossyness)
On the subject iron… i would also make your iron on the jest a little rusty maybe so it looks used and old
Just my 2 cents
Oh and the coins seem to be floating in the air
Hope my critic was constructive!
Topper
PS. i really like your bump on the coins and the chest !
Thanks so much the advice man 
You’re advice is espescially helpful, also, on the topic of the bump i used blender guru’s way of using crazy bump which is a great piece of software.
Also, i think the coins look like that because i used rigid body physics and they are weighed down by other coins on one side. Hope this made sense
It’s looking really nice.
I think the lighting on the first two was significantly better, everything about it was better in my eyes.
The background wasn’t so black vs. white, it faded a bit nicer,
The way the lighting was like a spotlight on stage,
IDK… I just liked it better.
Either way it’s really nice and I hope you do well in the competition
Thanks i noticed the lighting wasn’t as nice on this as well. I think i’ll mess around with it until i get a similar effect. Thanks for your support and if you’re interested in the competition it’s on a site called pxleyes. It holds weekly 3d and other contests so if you’re interested check it out.
The iron frame looks bad. It is ugly and unrealistic by itself, and it isn’t clearly defined from the background. You could either change the color of the glossy shader, or add a diffuse shader to the mix. The diamonds look abnormally dark. Diamonds are a symbol of glitter, of brilliance. These notions don’t suggest the blackest spot in the room.
L.E. Anyway, there is a clear improvement between the first image you posted and the last one.
Yeah, i’m still working on the frame but on the subject of the diamonds i have no idea how to fix them. They seem to come out dark no matter what i do so if you have any ideas please tell me. Thanks for the advice man
Thanks for your criticism and advice I’m still working on the frame but i don’t know how to fix the diamonds if you know a better material setup please share.
Maybe you should share yours and some guys could tell you whats wrong or what you could do better Without seeing what you did nobody can exactly tell what, where to improve … by the way the coins look much better now "!
Post your configuration for the diamond material, Ralek, so I can see how I can help.
L.E. Here is a render of a material I improvised:
Surely not even close in complexity to what I’ve seen people on the forum do, but I think it’s a fairly decent setup. The volume is a decimated and randomly deformed icosphere. Here is the setup itself:
There is a slight difference between the material you see in the nodes and the one in the rendered image, but you can still work with it.
Better! Have you ever thought about opening your chest ? So you can see some cool stuff in it ?
P.S. you don´t have to do such 1000 sample renders for a wip To see whats going on 100 samples (bit more bit less) are okay, thats just time you can´t model
I was considering that but i don’t think a full out open chest looks too nice. Maybe i could open it a bit and a few pearls and other things hanging over the edge. I could also try to get a cool golden light to come out of the chest, do you think that would look good?