[Sheik]

To my knowledge the colour of the skydome can not be changed from the plugin.
I think there is something else wrong here, can’t say exactly what it is. There should not be this much noise after 7 hours, and the tap looks like the colour would be fine with some extra cooking.
Things to try:
-Turn up the skydome intensity. You may have very little light so it takes a long time to render.
-If it doesn’t help try adding a few extra emitters. (Something like: 1m*1m faces pointing to the sink at about 10m distance. RGB 255,255,241, use type No, 400W). This should also make the metal more realistic.
-Keep the roughness of the metal at around 0,2-0,3.
-Try rounding the corners of the sink for added reality. Metal works best on curved surfaces. Also try making the bottom of the sink a bit smaller than the top, so the sides are not exactly co-planar (the light may keep bouncing between the sides).
-The light isn’t coming thru a window with glass, is it?
Sheik

[Sheik]

I made this test. It has skydome intensity at 50, but with no surrounding walls. Silver with roughness 0,2. It was rendered only for 10 minutes, directly from su2mxs.

Sheik

[Sheik]

And the same scene again, now with an added 400W emitter, and some water. (This is too transparent coming from the plugin). Renderd 50 min.

Sheik

[Sheik]

Yep, looking much better! I think the difference is still mostly in the amount of light. If you had to adjust the ISO or exposure to make the picture brighter you have less light there than I do. I just rendered with standard exposure settings. The direct sunlight using Physical sky will give you much more light into the room than the skydome. Think of the skydome as light on a very foggy day, light is equal in all directions, so inside a room it would be rather dark. Remove the walls or roof and you will see a huge difference.
The top of the sink does look strange. What is the roughness? 0,2 worked for me.
The abnormal magnification is just due to the way su2mxs does like now. You could fix it in Studio, or wait for RC6…
I’ll post the bump tomorrow when I’m at the office.
Sheik

[Sheik]

I have a pretty basic 2 GHz P4 laptop.
Try deleting everything that is out of view. This is what my scene looks like:

Also my countertop and the tile are diffuse, which is one thing speeding it up a bit.
You will probably need to set roughness to 0,3 for a more diffuse reflection from the tiles, and also some slight curvature on the top of the basin would work better.
Here is the water bump:

Sheik

[messire]

sheik
I came back to beta too.. as for skydome, everytime i select it its like night renders > i thought it did not work in beta! How do u succeed i having it work!

Thnx

Also i cannot get same result with water grrr strange
1. i draw a plane
2. extrude it a bit so it can be dialectric
3. add the bump map you gave us (thnx)

water doesn't appear at all
what am i missing???

thnx
Nils

[Sheik]

The surface of the water is just a single plane; you don’t need to extrude it like a window, as you have water until you hit the steel of the sink. Front face up naturally.
I assigned that face a Dielectic material; ND 1,33.
I used the map as texture of the SU material, and then defined SU Map Type as Bumping, so that texture is used as bump. That’s it.
Sky Dome didn’t work in beta, but does work in RC5. I am using RC5. I rarely use Sky Dome, but I guess you just have to use a higher Intensity if needed.