What a beautiful color and composition! GL

so beautiful

thats cool

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).

very nice work...good luck author

nice

thanks for the nice comments...

i love the gem but the contest states that gem only...no stand, carpets, pebbles or any other objects allowed and possibly on a black/ near black background. If these are allowed i think the contestants that already past their entries would have done it differently to get more of the caustic effect.

thanks for the comments ricky777.. please see the comments right below the contest goal... Lamantine has said that the lil bckgrnd is allowed (last comment)... and it was said 9 days before...

i'm not sure if that's ok though. the theme was accepted by the admin as is and i'm not sure if lamentine has the power to change it after it was approved but it's ok with me. i don't know what others might think.