The Reading Room-Rev. A

Thanks for the tip Richter, I never thought of doing that with carpets. I'll give it a try on my next interior. Horo, it's probably the way I did some of the lighting---the wrong way. I'll try better.

The philodendron leaves have now some transparency. I think it is a bit too much. There's still something odd with the shadows. They are clearly visible in the left corner but not elsewhere.

Very nice scene, Gary! And yes, with the AA-smooth factor all looks better. Something that caught my attention was the ceiling - you're using a sky photo, right? Very intuitive decision. Ok now, shadows... Here's what I'll tell you - if the shadows play tricks on you, you should return the favor. When you have partly-to-medium reflecting floor, even if there are shadows clearly and perfectly showing while the floor is still matte-covered, the begin to vanish once this floor becomes more and more reflecting, as a marble or granite tiling. So forget about the carpet being a cover for the whole floor and instead I suggest you to increase its reflectivity. Not too much of course, you wouldn't want a mirror there :) Experiment with lower values such as 5, 10 to 15. And if you want to get some "blurry" reflections instead of the perfect ones, then apply something noisy or wavy in the bump channel. For a suitable value there, you shouldn't go over 5 (depending on the color-saturation of the material) because of the regular AA's inaccuracy while rendering detailed bump. I hope the info proves useful. Good work, buddy! :)