V4
Thanks for the feedback,
I darkened the fog on the bg a bit to make it blend in with the whole image. The blue color isn’t that distracted anymore and there is more depth in the scene now.
I darkened the building on the right so that there is more contrast on the sled. Also I put a rim light on it.
The extra reflection made some artifacts on some parts. I cheated a bit in post to brush them away. I didnt wanted to wait for another render.
Overal I think its a better image now. thank you.
luck6 -
Nice improvement! It still looks a bit bleak to me. The background trees are so dim you almost can’t see them; maybe if they each had some lights on them, at least their top brick were glowing and lighting them up, then the more distant groves could have pools of warm light around them that would add depth to the scene and help break-up that background. You might have to add some of the glowing bricks to the foreground too, on the nearby trees or the decorations on the roof of the house on the right, and maybe make a few composition tweaks in response to this, but it could be worth it to have a warmer and more festive image.
-jeremy
Another update. Update number 5.
It keeps looking better and better. Thanks for all the feedback so far. They really help.
So far I have been adding lights at trees in the foreground and background. I added some extra lights for the background ground plane and also added some extra detail lights at the foreground.
I changed the camera lens to give it more of a overview. I thought the foreground was too much present in the last version. Now the composition works better.
Also I created some foot prints in the snow just for fun.
Overall I’m pretty happy with it. Maybe I will do something with the Sky. Now its just a simple image from the internet. If I have some time left I will make a matte painting for it.
luck6 loving the direction of where your taking it.
@jojo. I had to stop using Houdini as the rendering times were becoming horrendously large, even with almost no sampling. It was taking between 1.5 - 3 hours per render with a very noisy outcome and unfortunately I don’t usually have that sort of time to sit around wondering if the look is there or not. Even using the interactive renderer was not giving me results to see in any sort of usable time frame.
Houdini 16 is just around the corner and with it comes a lot of Mantra optimizations. An exciting time for doing things like this.
However I have started again in 3ds max, I will have something to post up very soon. (1.5 mins rendertime in max btw) 
Here is my first image in 3ds max. Sill plenty to do.
Link to full res:
https://postimg.org/image/8334rqq77/
Light Set-up (although a bit hard to make out):
High Res:
Hi everyone,
It’s nice to be back. It’s been a long time since I participate in Lighting Challenge. Thanks to @jojo1975 for the model for this challenge and has seen cool renders so far.
LC45 V001``
My first round. No detail lighting yet, just focus on camera and object placement for story telling.
Cheers…
Added key lighting to sculpt the mood and story. Got a bit of noise problems in the background, will handle those later on once all elements are finalized.
LC45 V002
Still plenty of things need to be added later. Feedback are very welcome 
Added more lights. Played around with colors in Nuke by grading each light from multilight passes output from 3Delight.
LC45 V003
Starting to get what I want, but probably still need to tweak the blue environment color further. Painted away some noise in the background due to bounces from smaller area lights, so maybe I’m going to close the some room in order to contain the light bounces to avoid too much noises.
Tweaked more lights. Added rim for the xmas tree and put more exposure for the center around santa to put more emphasis.
LC45 V004
Will move on to shading the scene.
Hi there,
Hope its not too late, here is my first attempt:
Comments welcome, thanks!
DW attempt 1
Hi, Here is an update, moved things around to improve the overall composition. Tweaks various material settings.
BTW, this was rendered with Electric Image Animation System. Used 3 several years old i7 Macs and 1 really old Xeon Mac Pro 8 core. About 40 minutes of render time. The scene used mainly 1 area light with 15432 light polygons. And 2 very low intensity fill lights.
LC45 v2
Here is my third version. Fine tuned the lighting to be little darker overall since it is a night scene. And have more of the light source from the area lights and less overall fill light.
LC45 version 3
1920x1080 version here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e87661yy8oe5dak/xmasLight%204th%20try%20a.jpg?dl=0
Thanks!
The challenge is going to close soon. So hurry up to post your entries. (next week I will comment all of them) Also we are currently look for modellers send me a pm to know more
Giorgio
Here is my final version
LC 45 Final
Hi res 1920x1080 here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yex7o486i7s9vf6/xmasLight%20vX.tif?dl=0
An alternate version with more trees:
LC 45 Alternate
Hi-Res here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d1awzeek2pl3efz/xmasLight%20VXI.tif?dl=0
@dwu67 : The alternate version looks great! The trees gave better focus the center of the image, compare than your previous image that looks darker for the background. Awesome work.
@jojo 1975 : Hi Giorgio, hope this challenge still opens by the end of this week? I’m getting close for the final submission.
Here’s my latest iteration, finally had the chance to add more materials after I gather Lego Color Palette and mixed them for my scene. Next will focus on snow and some little details that goes with my final submission.
LC45 V005
Render time went up to 5hrs 16mins but it’s quite fast since 50% of the image are subsurface.
Cheers…
One more version with sky and moon:
LC45 Moon
Hi-res:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q8704jqnb7pw6b1/xmasLight%20VXII.jpg?dl=0
Pheww…
Giorgio, I hope I made it for the deadline
This is my final submission. Added snow, some glitters, volumes and some post work in Nuke. Rendered using 3Delight in 6 hours using my crappy desktop machine which is i5 2.5GHz 2 Cores 8GB RAM.
LC45 V006
Comments and critics are very welcome.
Yes you did 
i will comment during this week. The thread will remain open so if everyone would like to post other versions you are welcome to do it