Here is a lake cabin illustration that I just completed.  The model was created in 3DS MAX Design 2011 and rendered using the V-Ray render engine.  If you have any technical question feel free to post them here.

Composition is one of the most misunderstood concepts in any form of artwork. It has been said that you can be the greatest painter in the world, but if you don’t know how to compose properly, your painting will fall apart and the same goes for digital art/illustrations/renders.

Like all illustrations of mine, this one started off in my head.  First I decide what would make this image special and I decide on a focal point.  These cabins are on a lake, very close to the water, and have windows and a deck facing the South.  I like to play with contrast so I typically place my camera about 45 degrees from my light source (in plan), with the focal point being in the light.  Since the cabins are on the lake facing South I know that you would see the sunrise so I took advantage of the glass on the sliding windows.  I chose the sunrise in the reflection as my focal point.

To bring the viewers eye to my focal point (composition is really about moving the viewer’s eye) I placed the boat in the foreground, pointing towards my focal point.  The boat was tipped slightly away from the camera so it wouldn’t bring so much attention to itself. I used yellow on the boat to help the viewer up into the image knowing the eye associates colors and the sunrise in the reflection is yellow too.  The focal point is also 1/3 to the left of center and about 1/3 below center, which is were the eye is naturally drawn to in an image.  I usually have my horizon lower, but I wanted at least as much blue water as blue sky (the water and sky are blue, which are complementary colors to my focal so it brings the illustration into balance).

Below are some screen grabs of my V-Ray settings: 

VFB Frame Buffer

Global Switches

Antialising

Image Sampler

Environment

Color Mapping

Camera Type

GI

Brute Force

Light Cache

Caustics

DMC

Displacement

Systems

Elements

V-Ray Camera

HDRI

Gamma

I can comfortably say that I have never used the same settings for any 2 scenes so these settings might not work for you, but it might be a good starting point. I am running a render farm with 90Gb of RAM and 24 processors so unless you have an equivalent farm these settings might be to high for you.

Below find some Photoshop CS5 post screen grabs:

(coming soon…)