Thanks ziljidian, I’ll google for a .rar utility then. Hopefully I’ll post my scene this week (I still have to learn Blender). Coming from Maya. . . blender is not very intuitive. But it’s free, and I can put up with a lot for that.
Let me guess: you play drums, right? 
–dbates
Take this with a shaker of salt, as I am not very good yet, but your banana has some blown-out highlights while the orange is just barely lit. Maybe you could decrease the intensity of the banana-light and put another one on the orange?
I have the files back up. Hope they are working. They are version 2 files now:
http://www.3drender.com/challenges/
By the way, the version 2 files replace some fruit items that had been downloaded from a free model site (3dcafe.com) with new, original models. There are no legal problems for any artist to use the first models in their rendering, you can stick with what was up the first time. We just saw fine print in that site’s licence agreement that the models themselves shouldn’t be given away for free by another website, so they needed to be replaced in the version of the scene that will be given away in the lighting challenge archives.
The version 2 scene looks alot like the v1, I positioned all the new fruit very close to where the old fruit was. The Maya file got smaller because I built most of the new models out of NURBS, but to export as .obj they are still converted into polygons in the OBJ version. Maya version requires Maya 7, download the OBJ to import into earlier versions of Maya.
-jeremy
Looks good. Maybe the top banana shouldn’t go that white - unless you really want to sell me on it, add an equally bright rim on the plate, make it really look glowing over there - but I like that you are shaping everything as if there were a window to the left of the scene.
The canvas colors, with the gray/blue canvas then the warm/brown canvas on the right side, they somehow look like 2 colors of cloth, instead of colored lights. The cloth in the left foreground is great, though, maybe just less blue on it would help in places.
The “sphere fruit” in back looks like they could use a touch of soft bounce light, being so close to the brightly lit apple and such. For rim light, maybe there could be a touch of rim light on the left side of the spheres, since they are near the light and might be fuzzy peaches by their color. The cherries that are sitting right in front of the grapes, though, that rim light looks a little too bright.
-jeremy
Smart boy!
I just relized I put the grape material on the cherries in mine … :eek:
I do something hipper tomorrow…
/Z
Nice! I wish the plate of fruit and the background were more “connected” somehow. Maybe a shadow or occlusion, unless you want to go the other way and consider the red cloth a lightsource and have it light the plate a little. It would help alot if you had the refractive fruit pick up more of the red, that would definately sell the integration better; just wrapping a red material all the way around the scene might help that.
-jeremy
Evening! 
Here’s how i did it using Maxwell beta 1.2.2a and the C4D connection plugin. Now it’s still rendering so this is a wip from meanwhile it’s rendering, i know the noise is still quite strong in it but that’s the way things are at the moment.
There are two main big light emitting planes in this on each side of the fruitbowl, and one smaller more focused light directed towards the center of the bowl from a top front direction. And last but not least there’s also a Skydome to provide with some background slightly yellowish ambient light in the scene.
It been rendering so far for 25 hours 22 minutes 13 seconds on my P4 3ghz 1GB ram puter. It reached sampling level 14,18 in that time.
/ Max
How about an evil fruit plate in a nightmare?
Blender. 3 lamps under the plate and one hidden between the apple, the pear and those rounded things on the left (what are those?)
Hello everybody, this is a very quick set-up.
A classic b&w render. No AO or GI, only 4 spotlights.
I don’t work the shaders, only the lights.
That’s great! I love the translucency on the grapes. Maybe the apple’s leaf could be made a little more translucent looking as well (might not need sss, maybe just not going to black so quick would do it…) Maybe the bottom of the banana could use a little more bounce, because its above the white plate, and the core of the shading a little darker where it falls off below the bend. Other than that it’s great. Which renderer are you using?
-jeremy
Well here’s my final…well final for now. Did little bits here and there during my free time. I didn’t move my keyLight because I still wanted some focus on the green grapes. But I added some width to the image and added some procdural shaders to it. Tweaked color a bit in Photoshop and added grain. But for the most part it’s sw renderer. I might start lighting a different approach to the scene for the next image. Again, any comments welcome.
*On a side note: There are some very cool images here! (esp. the glass one).
edit : forgot to add something to the leaf of the apple. 
Will update soon.
a conventional yet effective 3P lighting.
It is an image where shadows have the same protagonism as objects.
YafRay through Blender
Thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting
That’s great. Especially with the way you have the background working, it really feels almost like I’m looking at a painting. If you’re doing another pass to fix little things like the leaf, those rim lights on the banana and the left side of the orange look like they’d be better if they were brought down alot. Just my .02.
*Yes, lots of great images here. I was mentioning in the other thread, it’ll be great if we get some tutorials and breakdowns based on these projects, so we can put the challenge images together into a gallery along with some useful info from some of the people who made them.
-jeremy
I’m inspired by you people…some of these are damn good. Here’s my first attempt, and actually, my first posting of an image to CGTalk…wooo hoooo! lol
hey jeremy… thanks for having a look at that and commenting… im really glad you did…
i used cinema 4D’s Advanced render… besides that i use finalrender, vray, MR and maxwell… but i decided to go with AR because of its mix between flexibility and ease of use - its a boutique one but i like it
but i have to admit, that a lot of the athmosphere and subtle effects were created in photoshop… ill post a breakdown tomorrow…
again thanks a lot for your comment… just an hour ago i told my girlfriend, that i wished soo much for a comment of you because lighting, shading and PP are my strenghts and you´re one of the best at that…
-,donal
No shading, just playing with colored lights in this one. Four spots, two shadow maps. I should get rid of the highlights of the bounce and fill lights, but I thought rendering in layers would be cheating and my light linking plugin isn’t finished yet 
Hi there,
This is my small attempt, going for a painterly look.
Rendered in a few minutes in Mental Ray, no GI/FG
P.S. Hi Eldo, good to see you again. Haven’t seen you around for quite a while.
Was macht die Kunst?
All these great renders make me embarrassed to submit mine! But I have to start somewhere, I guess. :shrug: C&C much appreciated!
Blender, internal renderer (no Yafray yet), no textures.
http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/3976/render16sz.jpg
–dbates
EDIT: Forgot to add: this is straight out of Blender. No post work–I don’t know how to render layers from Blender yet.
