Crystal skull

[yossam]

Do you have any pics of your collection? 

[yossam]

Minor adjustment.............

[Dune]

Only your stone bed needs some work, but I like the result. You might try a second skull, slightly smaller inside this one (and lifted accordingly), see if the water shader is really transparent.... or get some subsurface scattering realized in another way.

[yossam]

What type work does the stone bed require........................

[Dune]

Tiny fake stones (0.005-0.01) in the flattish areas between the stones, or a tiny displacement shader. It's too flat between the stones IMHO.

[yossam]

Did what Dune suggested..............stuck a copy of the skull inside the original at a smaller size. You decide if it made it better. Render time went from 90 minutes to 5.5 hours. 

[choronr]

First, I believe the space between the larger stones looks much better with the cover of much smaller grains. As for the skull, it seems like part of it looks opaque; unless it is picking up reflections from the ground like a mirror effect.

[Dune]

I agree, the ground looks good. The skull is interesting this way, you can really see one inside. What I was thinking though is making the inner one only slightly smaller, 5% or so, and make the water shader(s) less transparent (probably saves render time as well), and see whether you can get some SSS out of that, perhaps even with a surface layer on the inner with some voronoi luminosity-like caustics. But I don't want to send you in any direction, it's just a thought...

[yossam]

The original skull is is sized at 1,1,1. The copy is .996,.996,.996, so it is only slightly smaller. May come back to this at a later date.............

[Dune]

In that case it seems like you don't really see the inner skull, or only a very small reflection, the dark bit inside. Strange. But the water shader isn't really transparent, but a surface layer calculated to seem transparent (I think), so maybe that's why you don't see the inner one. Something to experiment with, obviously.

[fleetwood]

First let me say thanks for your enjoyable and unusual image . 

Please don't take offense, I'm just being very nit picky , maybe because I've personally faceted and polished many forms of quartz including rose quartz, amethyst, smoky quartz, and rock crystal. --

The skull in the image gives me the impression of something wet rather than something dry and highly polished.
I question the green color if the skull is supposed to be "rock crystal".
Rock crystal (clear quartz) is the typical material used for the famous "crystal" skulls and rock crystal does not show green decay color.
The green cast in your image is pretty typical of window or bottle glass.
The refractive index for rock crystal material falls in the small range of 1.544 to 1.553.
I also wonder if the scorpion would get any benefit from higher translucency.

[yossam]

Is this any better...................?

[fleetwood]

Thanks, coke bottle look totally gone . I do like the new scorpion better 

[Oshyan]

Scorpion looks good, new skull shading not so much. Honestly I think the last iteration of the skull was pretty good.

- Oshyan

[yossam]

Last one......................