Another update on the tea time scene. I did decide to ditch the notebook, and I think I've added all the elements I want to feature in this piece, I just need to figure out the best way to arrange them. 

My shaders are also near completion. At this point, I feel that the tea and the plate still need some work, but I am pretty satisfied with everything else in the scene.

I am really happy with the jam on the toast. This was achieved simply by using a flattened cube on the toast, with an opacity map painted in Mari (featured below). I used a bercon noise for displacement, and a light pink refraction color for the shading. The specular model is similar to that of water. 

I am looking forward to finishing this soon and moving on to my next project.

I've created a couple of new elements for the tea time scene, a handkerchief and a notebook. 

I created the handkerchief using nCloth in Maya, and an opacity map in the shader to create the trim around the edges. 

I don't think I will be keeping the notebook, as it doesn't fit groove with the other objects in the scene. I may bring it back in on another project.

So I've been inspired as of late to really push myself and create some new, better work for my demo reel. I'm planning for this project to be a still life of a tea party, based on these reference images. My key elements of focus for this project will be a tight composition and photorealistic shading.

Here is my first crack at the teacup shader. It consists of a V-Ray Blend Material to separate the gold from the porcelain areas, using a simple map I created in Mari. For the porcelain, I focused on subtle surface details, which I brought through using the reflection and bump channels. I used the composite texture inside 3DS Max to layer images of scratches and bumps with high frequency Bercon noise textures, as pictured below.

The teapot was created using the same basic material as the cup, but altered to work with the new flower pattern. Maps were again painted in Mari to separate the gold pieces with a Blend Material.