This is my entry for the weekend challenge.
This is also the first picture where I have used a complex lighting scheme (GI dome for ambient + duplivert spot)
I still need to get the hang on blender textures who act very differently than those from PoV.
Please C&C
I like your modeling on the lamp – the snake is quite interesting, but it looks like it’s intersecting the body of the lamp. A minor tweak, but it’s worth fixing. You also have some intersection going on between the coins and the walls of the treasure chest.
I’m going to be very blunt with the lighting. You need to fix it. I’ve had major lighting problems in the past, but I learned a lot with the pen ( https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20894 ) I did with Sno4wy yesterday. A GI dome and dupliverted spot lamps are great for creating realism, but that’s all they’re good for. Your scene has no sense of foreground or background; it has no focal point and the eye is not drawn anywhere. Right now it’s boring, but you can fix that with good lighting!
I’d start off by deleting that GI dome and all those spot lamps, moving them to another layer, whatever. Then get yourself a good 3 point lighting setup to start things off; I have found that the back light is extremely useful in emphasizing a subject and separating it from the background. It creates a contrast, which is very important in showing an idea or an object. From there, you can soften up dark areas with GI, but remember that GI is secondary.
I don’t know if you’ll make these changes since you’ve posted this in Finished Projects, but if you do, good luck with them.
Matt
Thanks. The snake being the handle, it need to be attached, and I was a bit lazy by not adding a proper weld
I’d start off by deleting that GI dome and all those spot lamps, moving them to another layer, whatever. Then get yourself a good 3 point lighting setup to start things off;
I don’t know if you’ll make these changes since you’ve posted this in Finished Projects, but if you do, good luck with them.
Matt
I agree that lighting and textures are not that good. My light setup is very similar to a 3 point light , there is the grid spot as main lamp (the grid is very narrow and focused), a fill spot (red) on right side and the GI act as a backfill light. The focus point should be on the lamp.
But I have messed up my settings and put too much intensity in the GI. Also the GI lamp shadows where not activated.
In fact, I’m a blender newbie and my long experience with PoV seems to be unuseful and even counter-productive when texturing. I still need to learn the blender way and forget what I already know.
I will make a try to correct this this evening.
i really like the snake handle also, good model.
maybe you can give the lamp a more reflecting material/higher spec.
i finally finished a new render, but at least 5 hours past the deadline :-?
those ray-traced shadows are great but a bit slow when applied to a 100+ lamps GI dome.
note that the changes are minimals for such a result :
I had check first without the GI, it was less good
A thousand times better !
Looks awesome. I like the way the snake shadow lands on the box.
i totally agree with nico, that just looks a thousand times better… shadows give the world a great lot of depth, and since light is dominantly coming from one point, all objects are better defined by diffuse & specular shadow… in normal words: YEAH!
but you forgot to model the ghost 
Looks a lot better - the material of the lamp looks much more metallic. I like the coins as well. I think the overall mood is a lot more interesting.
This is quite minor at this point, but somewhat worth pointing out as you have a nearer-to-finished render. When I look at the treasure box, the way the shadows are on the inside makes it feel flat to me. I can’t really discern what you did (I’m a traditional artist, not an expert blenderhead)
Good job. I’m not sure about a “ghost,” but perhaps a genie would be interesting
wow awsome
Alltaken
Many thanks to all who have appreciated this second piece.
I’m only slighty sad that it did not come right the first time and that I missed the deadline 
Modron, the shadow on the box was intented from start, but I somehow blow a fuse when making adjustements before first render and flooding the scene with light. I had even fancied to give the snake red ruby glowing eyes, with their shadow glowing too :o
Scraze and Sno4wy, the djinn is in the picture, it’s the toothed snake !
Snakes are the most often used non-human form by djinns & afrites.
Note that this picture, due to its high contrast, render very differently between my macintoshs and the PC at work, the latter being not gamma corrected. The two are good with much more emphasis on the darker PC.
<edit> Sno4wy, I don’t understand what you mean ?
great work buddy!but my suggestion to you is that unless you have exceptional cases like more than one light sources are there in practical world simulations, you should always have only one lamp casting shadows.that way you can have a cleaner image and would look nicer too!
thanks. In general, you are right, but here, I wanted the shadow on the box, it is a full part of the picture, and yet with a spot almost perpendicular to the lamp, I need other shadows to better define the volume. The GI was good but not enough.
So with this composition, I needed 2 shadows. Perhaps with a better comp, I may have had only one but could not find a way.
You will notice the two shadows are different, the one on box is hard (one spot) when the other is soft (array of spots) , even if not enough to my taste.
My rule:
Never use lamps that don’t cast shadows.
In reality, every light casts shadows. So why would someone want to use lamps without shadows?[/b]
becouse you can, in 3d, also when you filming real video, you can “cancel” some Shades, by outer stronger lights, usualy there will be 3 light . 2 of them, wouldn’t cast shadows…
Eyal
E-tek sure in film you can cancel outsome shadows by floding them.
however in 3d it doesn’t work like that. if you turn off the shadows from a lamp it will go through EVERYTHING, this will make even small cracks light up like a christmas tree.
in real life you cannot get a light that will go through everything excpet for X-Rays but can we see them???
his GI dome of 100 or so lamps was over the top yes, you only really need 30 to achive a good one.
however his technique is correct.
Alltaken
Well, coming from ray-tracing with POV, I’m used to renders that take days (the longest was 14), so I don’t really mind having one of my computers working overnight.
That was also my first full GI dome, I have used in the past area lights, so I wasn’t sure how many lamps were needed for the best effect. I’m quite pleased with the result even if I missed the deadline of challenge.
However, next time, I will try with less lamps 
Hi Alltaken
If I understand right (and from expiriacing with light in blender) this GI dome lights (lamps) actually “cancel” each outer shadow in a way, or in outer words its all shaded at the same level, then its more like ambiant light, that shouldn’t really get shadow.
Also I was studying lighting (for video film production), I usually use the same stuff I learn there: key light, for main shadow direction (some time use only shadow and more lamp from this direction), back light(s) for contrioling the shadow (more soft, or hard), and some ambiant lights, else I need halo light or such…
I almost never use GI, but most of my scenes are product presentation, so I’m not really (or have the time)needed to take much care for lighting.
Eyal
not only. textures in this picture have very low ambient due to the GI, it’s true, but its role is deeper than that. You have variations from point to point and the modeled is literrally sculpted by light, with very fine detailling both in the lighted and shadow areas. It is similar in effect to the big diffuse light box used by photographs. You get penumbra everywhere and shadows only inside the deepest creases.
Also I was studying lighting (for video film production), I usually use the same stuff I learn there: key light, for main shadow direction (some time use only shadow and more lamp from this direction), back light(s) for contrioling the shadow (more soft, or hard), and some ambiant lights, else I need halo light or such…
Eyal
There is two more types for stills both in CG and real :
fill light side spot with wide beam to give volume
specular very tight spot for highlights
Here, the rather strong key light (right of camera) flatten the picture and the fill area spots are there to cancel that.