CJI

To me i think thats going to be one of those awkward ones, with no way round just getting deep in to it. Use the Symmetry to limit the amount you need to model. keep it as low poly as possible at first until you get the general flow, i usually start with 8 sides with Cylindrical objects as that way you can fairly easily join rectangles and other cylindrical objects. Let us know how you get on, would be good to see how you did it in the end.

Hide your Glass panes. Download a script called RenderMask. Select your trees and whatever else you need a mask for. Use script. Done.

Generally, and most will agree, you're contract is with your client. His client is a third party in the chain. An important one but not who you did the work for. When a job is finished he should pay you regardless. the fact that you have agreed to changes muddies the waters a bit as technically the job isn't over yet. This situation has come up for most of us at some point. I don't really know the best way around it. some say take a retainer up front before work commences to safeguard you against this type of thing but these can be difficult to get out of any client for a small freelancer. Its an awkward one. other than patience i don't know what to suggest. There are underhanded tricks you hear of but none that will set you in a good light or retain a good relationship.

I'm completely agree with Juraj on all the above, especially that clients are increasingly looking at websites and social media to find talent that inspire them and they believe can help them. I've never posted on websites much as i am exceptionally self critical but i did recently set up a behance account. I've already had clients find me and been recruited by a CG studio off the back of this behance account alone without a push in to the wider audience of Facebook, and Pinterest etc yet. Clients, and procurement are evolving rapidly to include these new mediums. You are right Peter that many can still be insular in the way they go about things, but that is changing with the saturation and easy consumption of media on the internet now. Tablets and mobile phones especially get your work out to people in a way that just wasn't possible before.

I could be wrong though, i only quickly googled it and didnt get anything.

Last i used C4D it didn't have any kind of native material ID pass. From what I have quickly googled it doesn't seem to be a feature that is implemented yet (Sorely need it if you ask me, a hole in what is great software). 3rd party apps for it do like vray etc, not as if that's any help.

I prefer the light in the second image, cold overcast light from outside and the warmth of the artificial light providing depth and a sense of shifting shadows. Can't always get a client to buy in to these though ("Mediterranean sun" syndrome ). Also for such cold blue/grey light from outside suggesting overcast the shadows from the window would need to be soft and diffuse, although i do understand this is post work you are comparing here. Agree with NicNic about person, personally if I can't get the people to look perfect, i would rather loose them all together (again not always an option).

Or you could put a map in the environment slot of the floor material if you just want that material to reflect it. Depends how you want the final to look.

Well it's definitely not the computer then There is a few things that stick out to me. I will try and keep it structured. Final gather - density is very high and will cripple render speed. In combination with GI I have rarely if ever gone over 0.4 - noise filter. None or standard. Probably standard as I see you are using ibl. Helps with hdri artifacts. GI - when using GI I have seen quite a few methods here but I personally have had good success with Justin Hunts method of smaller sample radius with lots of samples. -radius is too small. I work in mm but as far as I can tell that's a radius of 1inch so 25mm which is pretty small. Try increasing this to around 150mm-200mm(6"-8") - you can reduce max photon per sample to 100 - 200 -optimise for final gather on -increase photons per light to 500000+ Start here and work up if necessary. Don't be afraid of 1 or 2 million of needed. -trace depth 300 with reflect and refract at 150 each. This is how much the photons bounce about. The idea is to get the small amounts of photons to bounce loads across the scene. Sampling - I can't comment on unified sampling as haven't really used it (mr here is slightly outdated :s) -spatial contrast seems quite low for that scene. 0.03 should be more than enough. Materials - the lamp material likely takes quite a bit to render. 0.1 glossy refractions is massively overkill in my opinion especially as at the moment you won't see it. Maybe replace the geometry with single sided faces and use the transparency function instead. - 0.2 reflection glossiness on the lamp is a super diffuse material and even with 32 samples you will see loads of grain. I rarely go below 0.6 - 0.5 at 32 samples. Below this switch to FG + highlights. Skylight - 64 samples may or may not be too much. Depending how other issue are resolved. I have certainly gone that high before. - I would ask why you chose to set the GI manually. I usually allow auto calculation and use the global multipliers for more finite control. Unless you REALLY know what you were doing I would steer clear of setting these yourself. Not saying don't but I think most find it more efficient to use the global multipliers setting instead. Ok I think that's everything. Bear in mind other might/will have differing and opinions. Hope mine help, keep us posted

Very curious what your specs are and rendering settings. all night for an 800 x 600 seems pretty excessive.

I agree with everything that Matt has suggested. When switching to Highlights + FG reflections be careful of the reflection amount. I have found that if you dont reduce this it can really over brighten your material. Something to keep an eye on.

Dario's solution is the only one i'm aware of that semi works. Its not a perfect distribution in my experience but its the closest you will get in MR. It frustrating to say the least!

What Scott said. You will need to do it in 2 passes if i understand what you are trying to achieve. One of the toaster as is, then one with the outer casing hidden to expose the inner parts. Then composite in Photoshop.

In 2009 asset tracking is under File>Asset Tracking near the bottom. Or press Shift+T.

Agree with Devin. Its not a good idea to run two at a time, not to mention Its pointless as it wont be any faster. Word of warning, as good as render farms are, if you have not done it before be prepared to factor in upload time of all required assets as well as any redundancy for any problems. I got burned once on a very tight deadline where my computer just couldn't do it in time (at the time i couldn't figure out why, perhaps stress brain!) but when i uploaded to rebus it just rendered blank, there were no warnings but it just wouldn't render. I much later discovered there was a problem with my scene (user error) as it shouldn't have been much of a problem even on my own machine but that was a very stressful two days. You live and learn, completely changed the way i work as result which can only be a good thing. Im not saying this will happen, just a heads up