Original Post
Your AO is very rough, turn up the sample amount. Other than that, it looks decent for a new user.
What version are you using?
What version are you using?
The top sphere blends in with the background of the image which makes the sphere seem flat.
The quality of the image was kind of bad which makes the blue sphere seem kind of flat.
Other then that, It's good for a new user.
The quality of the image was kind of bad which makes the blue sphere seem kind of flat.
Other then that, It's good for a new user.
Second one is surprisingly nice.
You need to change your lamp to a sun, up the shadow sampling and use constant QMC.
On your ambient occlusion up the number of samples to get a nice smooth look (without all the noise), and try swapping it to Both to really push the shadow, right now it is very washed out.
It looks like you havn't done much material work in terms of phong and shaders, so perhaps look in to that to make your second render more believable. Raise the hardness and add some reflection too.
Look up HDRI for blender, and that will help you with reflections too - and add more things in to your scene if you are testing reflection/refraction
You need to change your lamp to a sun, up the shadow sampling and use constant QMC.
On your ambient occlusion up the number of samples to get a nice smooth look (without all the noise), and try swapping it to Both to really push the shadow, right now it is very washed out.
It looks like you havn't done much material work in terms of phong and shaders, so perhaps look in to that to make your second render more believable. Raise the hardness and add some reflection too.
Look up HDRI for blender, and that will help you with reflections too - and add more things in to your scene if you are testing reflection/refraction