Great shot, i love the mood. Looks real...excellent. GL

It’s a Very pleasing visual image on the whole and nicely model. But I feel that the exposure settings are making the lighting look a little to dim for me personally. From the backdrop it is only just twilight. I also see from your SBS you are using standard lighting I’d recommend configuring the exposure for the interior lights, then dial up the multiplier just a small amount. Other options are using IES profiles on photometric lights. This would automatic give you a lighter and more accurate scene in the way of lighting. Or using a night time/evening HDR with the help of a light or too. Devils in the detail…..

yip yap yabble yaa yaa.. (I couldn't do it.. so I think it's TERRIFIC...hehehehe) now if I could just sneak in a bottle of vodka and some Kahlua I'd be all set.. with lots of cream!!!

Kind'a like it!

Great job showing the breeze! I know that can't be easy to do and you pulled it off well.

This is a great looking pic nicely done.
From what Warlock says, have you checked out Linear Workflows, there are a few tutorials out there to add to your arsenal.

super cool work author...very intelligent approach...well done

I like it... lighting and all.

Congrats for 1st, great job.

Congrats Helen...great entry...

Congrats on 1st, lovely image

congrats

That's sooo cool and it's a fantastic render!! GL!

Fab render!! GL

I like this, looks great

Fantastic piece author...one of the top entry's for sure...well done

Really cool work here! Love it!

Congrats for 2nd, nice render.

Congrats...

congrats

Nice work, my only nit pick would be the fire edges at the front seem too sharp and jagged, IMHO...GL

superb combo of elements author...ice cube is my favorite object here...well done

Nice image. Maybe I would slightly adjust the ice so it was less translucent. The fire looks well, but I'm having a hard time with the edges, they somehow need softening, and the glow intensity maybe should be more centered towards the hottest part of the fire in the middle. But overall a nice image. Well modeled, with some tweaks to the textures this could be outstanding.

Many thanks everybody for your suggestions and kind comments is very much appreciated.

Update in progress..........

Updated the fire with softer edges. I did not add more intensity to the middle of the fire, as from the visual refs I took a quick look at before I did any major changes you only see this intense glow which looks to come from the center when there are multiple objects alight at once. Same with the melting ice cube it is highly translucent when in this semi dissolved state. Still valid points and made me re-evaluate my work so great feed back.......

Spot on!! The adjustments work perfectly GL

Congrats for 3rd

Congrats...

Congrats on 3rd

congrats

love the clarity!

Cool idea but still needs a little work just to Increase the realism. The render is not bad but could be improved im guessing this is a HDR environment do you have any lights as well? If not then add one directional light not to strong to help reduce the noise with no shadow type and 250 samples to start with. The water drop is good but looks un-natural due to there are no ripples in the waters surface adding these will improve the realism.

I think ripples would add to the realism also, how about a wavy spline ~~~~ and rotate the same way as you made the glass.

@Warlock - Yes, I've been aware of the shadow noise, although it be ever so minimal. If you look at the high res, there is one ripple in the water right next to the drop, and perhaps a few more wouldn't hurt maybe added with some noise displacement.

*Edit - I went ahead and upped the samples and added a few ripples with a noise displacement on the top (to try and simulate the randomness of it all)

great job cool lighting and caustics

This has the potential to be outstanding. My problem is the caustics are wrong. This is the reason you are getting Black blocks on your glass and water. The easy way to rectify this is to change the environment to white. The caustics need extending, as all of the subject matter is transparent. and water bends light quite strongly. As for the shadows being noisy, I struggled with this for a long time. This is a combination of render settings and light settings. There is no easy fix for this. I know they're not as noisy as they were. What anti aliasing engine are you using. I would suggest Adaptive DMC. This is by far the better filter. Great job overall though. A bit more work on the caustics and shadows and this would be awesome!

@r1k3r - I disagree with you. The white and black were purposely put in there to give the object a dynamic look, otherwise everything would be a pale white. It's got nothing to do with caustics (look the word up).

clever work author...gl

This is a pretty nice image author. The only thing I would suggest is to use some lens effects on the camera you used to make the sun less "flat" The lens flare and glow effects would be a good place to start. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGcToM_DyKU check out this tutorial for an excellent planet scene. There's nothing more beautiful than the Earth. This has captured my imagination. Well done author.

Thanks r1k3r, i thought about lens effects, and know a lot of people don't seem to like them. But now you have suggested (and i must admit i like them) i will update scene. Many thanks

Truth is photoshoppers will never like Lens effects Don't know why? But when it comes to space almost always there will be some lens flare and glow effects because of the nature of the sun This is a beautiful image and well done. Just tweak the camera slightly. and this will look like the sun rising over the Earth. Which for those that have actually seen it must be amazing! well done author.

r1k3r used your sugestion and i think it looks more powerful now, thanks.

Looks great, fab job