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Hi y'all!

This is my first new year's competition entry. It's an little unusual scifi xmass tree, but still familiar enough...
Since I will use the render as a holiday card, let me at this point wish a happy end year celebration and fruitful 2011 to all fellow Octaners!
While cooking for 2h 21min (pathtracing, 12 depth), it reached 2200 samples / px on my GTX460, for a resolution of 1500x2100. Polycount is ~1.1mio.
For postpro I only did some de-noising in Gimp on both pictures and added a tad of glow to the first one. All the modeling and textures are made by me with Blender & Gimp. HDR for IBL is from hdrlabs.com. I posted two variations of the same render because I like both. But if I have to choose, I pick the golden one.

I consider this finished (I have another scene in development), but I would still like to hear some c&c.

plain beauty! and really in the xmas spirit, great job. Congrats and good luck.

Thanks, kubo. Yeah, x-mas... I'm a fan of Futurama... Next year I'm doing evil Santa. (with Octane v2.0 final, of course )

very good matej, thumb up
greetings from italy

ciao beppe

Thanks, Beppe

I found the lighting a little bit too harsh, and the tones are too similar in the overal picture. I would have gone for a more subtle lighting with different tones, and more contrast between the different elements in the composition, so it's less monochromatic. But that's just me, otherwise good work mate !

To sum it up, I prefer the first picture, but the purple seems a little bit off to me, and the lighting is harsh (but that's a matter of taste of course). ^_^

A.

nice work..i like it..
its going to be tough - this competetion

@arkanis,

thanks for your input. I agree with you on the first render - it has a too strong change of contrast between dark and bright areas. The second one is still my preferred among all the different tonemapping variations I tried on this render. Generally I tend to prefer less saturated colors, and a monochromatic color scheme IMO better fits the nature of the render; non-organic, mechanical objects. But, yeah, much is dependent on personal preferences & style.

Here's a fast postpro (same render, but different tonemapping output from Octane), that takes into account your observations: @suhail_spa, thanks. The competition was tough from the start, even if it doesn't yet look like so. I'm sure that after the holidays the guys will bring out the big guns. So, be prepared.

Anyway, good luck to all.

looks amazing great work man,,good luck

sci-fi meets Christmas - Wonderful!

Put it in the shops, it will sell in the millions next year!