Hi everybody.

This is my first post here at Simply Maya and I am very happy to participate on this. Considering I'm a noobie in every aspect, I hope you feel free to make any kind of advice or C+C as you wish regarding any issue of my posts.

So let's get to the point. At the moment I'm working on this Harpsichord Project. The model is one I did some time ago, actually it was my first model. So here I'm trying to deal only with Rendering issues that I should list: Lighting, Texturing, Shader tweaking and Rendering itself with Mental Ray.

I really don't want to mess with the model itself, because that's not where I'm focusing on right now.

I started some tests that I'm posting right away.

First image: This is from where I want to start discussion...
I guess most important issues are the following:

GI with Spot Light emitting Photons.
Raytrace turned on for reflections.

I was not satisfied because of the "Plastic mood" I think got here.

Thanks to everybody.

Seejee.