congratulations!!

brilliant idea, very well executed, looking very original, good luck.

I love the illusion! I had to look at it a couple of times, to fully appreciate it.

And yes, it is far too neat to be "real..." LOLOL!
Very nice effort!

yes, very good. but that desk is waaaaay too tidy. I like how the 3d light shines down onto your mouse mat.

lovely

This entry is so beautiful author, you did a lot of work on it I can see from your SBS, don't get discourage from anything, people try to help, best of luck! :0)

I personally preferred the camera angles used in the SBS, they looked more interesting as a shape opposed to what appears to be a star shape here. GL

Groboto is very cool software. This came out well.

It's pretty, but doesn't look like a fractal, it just looks like a star.

I think that the render you had in your workings document actually looks better than this final image... it's the one with the black building (before you textured it).

On a side note, there is no way ever that that building would ever be constructed, the french are VERY particular about keeping "their" truly historical.

Nice work author! best of luck!

Lovely artistic way to show the name!

Author: Don't take criticism as insults! Honestly after seeing the SBS, I see the dome everytime. And the image is a great effort. Sometimes people make criticize without offering actual solutions, either a result of not knowing the solution because they don't know your program, or just lazy. Either way, everything that we say here should be a learning experience. Never remove an entry that doesn't break the rules. You can always improve it and resubmit it. But NEVER remove something that you worked hard on because it's not "perfect."

well done

Very readable! How many times did you have to practice it?

Good visual tension!

Author I think it looks pretty good. Good idea for this contest.One suggestion would be to use Photoshop and clone that pesky bus out of existence. Like Cabldawg said it's not ugly. Kudo's for your efforts, the only way to learn this stuff is to just jump in there and go for it. Good start for this contest BTW.

Yes Author you should have uploaded it. I could see the dome and your skills will improve. Do not be discouraged. It is not ugly.

Cheers

The issue with the shadow that the building is casting should be able to be fixed in your software. There should be in your rendering options a way to adjust your shadows, maybe increase them. Also, if you increase your refractions by one, your dome will stand out more as a dome and not just the shape of the building, I think. I can see it now, like farsite said, I couldn't until after seeing the SBS. Just trying to help.

Looks good, I would suggest some kind of supporting frame for the dome on top of the building - until I looked at the SBS I couldn't tell it was a dome I just thought that was the shape of the roof.

Shadows could be a bit darker too

At 600px, with no Hi-res, it's hard to see what the column is going through, just that the angled shadow going through that bus is not consistent with the shadows coming off of every other object in your background, most noticeably the trees...Since the bus is casting a shadow, the shadow on the ground should be of the same value as the bus shadow. Shadows don't get lighter...

My observational skills are sufficient to see glaring errors...

There is a bit of shadow on the RH side towards the back, that does not work with shape of the building. Also, the shadow in the center is not as dark as the rest of the shadows in the image. Shadow does not get lighter.

It is a beautiful piece of Art, calming!!!!

DOF is well done, good job

SOoooo dark! Part of the beauty of the painting are the colors and the brushstrokes. This is just an almost black mass with some bright spots and black shapes coming out...

Great shot, and the high res looks pretty good.

amazing capture author, one of the most successful light painting photo's i've ever came across

Great pic! I really like the orange sky and how the train tracks exit out the right corner. You used a digital camera right? The only reason I can think of for the noise (fuzziness) is the megapixels your camera has (only if it is low, otherwise I dunno why it is so noisy).

not following the rules this time huh??? we have a rebel in our midst. great model and render, but rules are rules and i think you should at least write out a few steps. simply because you can buy or download models like this all over the internet im sure you modeled this yourself but again rules are rules.

Really nice render. This is exactly something that would benefit from additional Photoshop help. If you were to soften the shadow edge a bit and gradually go lighter the further away it gets from the can...I think it would greatly improve and already great pic.

This is a nicely finished model, its a little simple in my opinion but thats not really a criticism, i'd just like to see more of your work, see it as a compliment.

great neat work...gl

very very nice piece author...gl

I think you miss understand SBS, what you have is a couple completed renders.

i like

very good work author...gl

Where's the Weber logo? This looks incredible!

Certainly this is a good image. I read the SBS, and really would suggest turning the bump map down to at least 3, if using 3ds max. At the moment the planet looks a little noisy. Also for the material, I would change the shader from "Blinn" to "Phong" and set the specularity to 22 and the glossiness to 22. This will give a more realistic shine and reflect to the Earth. I don't know what render engine your using, But if your using Vray click the area shadows box and play with the UVW values to soften the transition from night to day. But overall a beautiful image.

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!

nice idea...gl

very nice shot author...best of luck

Remarkable picture

great job cool lighting and caustics

Love the High Res

good shot.

good shot.

Congrats! A honest first place!

Congrats for your second place!

Congrats for your first place!