Bonsai project

[zooropa]

Hi. I am re-building my personal portfolio. Few year ago I did a furniture to place a bonsai in it.
I have the images (taken in a photograph studio), but unfortunately did not have the bonsai at that moment.
Now I feel this project needs to be shown with the bonsai in order to communicate the main function of the furniture.
I started by 'matching' the light and materials from my photographies to the KS scene where I want to locate the bonsai.
So far is going well. Maybe some things to tweak, but I am satisfied. I needed to know that I have the potential to match the pictures in KS. Even if I am not there yet, I believe is possible I get where I want.
I attached a picture of my furniture in the photoshoot studio and the new camera with the bonsai that my render is going to have.
I would really appreciate feedback from the community. I want to know what do you think it is lacking in order to get to a 100% believable render. I do not want to show my project as a mix between renders and photographies, but more like an coherent look, where every render or picture look like a picture hahahah.

Here some things I am noticing that I would like to improve in order to 'get there'.


BONSAI PLANT

I bought the bonsai block from CGaxis.com | the leaves are masked (opacity channel) on surfaces (squarish)  and the other map that comes for the leaves is a diffuse map that I tweaked in order to be green leaves. The bonsai comes in a 'reddish' tone emulating an autumn tree. At this moment the 'material type' is a diffuse one. No reflections or anything. Since the leaves come just with a diffuse and an opacity map I left it like it is. Now that I am looking the render I was wondering if I should have some kind of 'translucent' material to give certain depth to the leaves. As they are know it seems they are lacking some kind of 'complexity' in the way of how interact with light. Maybe I will gain a closer 'realistic' look if the leaves behave differently accordingly to the density  by tweaking the translucency. Since they are based on flat surfaces (no thickness) I would like to know if its possible to apply translucency to it. In case it is I would like to ask someone which are the parameters for a 'flat' non thick surface. I am asking this cause my computer is extremely slow at the time of calculating such a dense model (less than 1 FPS). So probably I will gain time if someone can give me a recommendation and avoid over-tweaking.

I am satisfied with the soil within the pot.
The bark of the bonsai is a little bit 'dull', but this came also with a bump+diffuse map. So I am driving it also through a 'diffuse' material type. Maybe I will get benefited by using a 'reflective' material type ?

For the pot I am using my own model, but with the textures of CGaxis block (it also comes with the pot). In this case I have a diffuse+reflective and bump channel. Still not satisfied. I am using a 'metallic paint'. I am tweaking it in the material graph. Trying to gain certain contrast between the 'polished' and 'roughed' aspect of the concrete. Still not managing to accomplish the effect. From a close camera behaves much better, but from the camera I need....it seems the effects vanishes. I do not find any 'depth' in the material. Everything seems to have a constant shining, even if I spend a lot tweaking the contrast in the reflective texture in order to get a richer material.

The Furniture

I spend a lot in order to match the wood material with the one in the picture. Still did not manage with the 'color composite' node. I will probably use the clown pass to mask in photoshop and do it in post.

Regarding the Coral paint. It looks quite nice from a closer view. I added some bumps to break reflections and give a more realistic look. Again from the distance of my camera ...also seems to be washed out and seems like a perfect surface again.

I am not sure why the 'screenshot' option to get the render from the preview is given my a much less brighter image from the actual KS window. I hope I can solve this in order to show to you in a precise way.

[zooropa]

Edit one:

I am trying to tweak the leaves material with a 'translucent (advanced)' material type.
My fps are 0.1. Is it possible to please ask help to someone with a 'super computer' ? 
I am not even sure if the settings are ok, but I guess with this speed will be kind of a long process.

I leave attached the material composition for the leaves that I am trying now. There is a diffuse texture applied
in the 'texture' channel. There is a mask applied in the opacity channel and there is a bump...

Any idea of translucency parameters for a thin surface ?
Should I applied a Subsurface texture?   MMM in case yes...which one ? Or I need to build one.

[Will Gibbons]

A lot of this appearance will depend on your lighting. I'd be sure to use a high-quality and high-contrast HDRI. Definitely avoid the startup KeyShot environment.