I also agree about the ivy, but you can never have too many rat droppings.
Okay so here’s the latest:
I’ve cut down on the ivy and fiddled about with colour corrections (nothing too noticeable so it’s all good). No need for a change log on this one.
Is this still too much?
If everything concerning the ivy is done, what else can I do?
Maybe the plants that are on the floor are very large
That’s more of a density thing. They’ve sort of clumped up. Or do you mean the leaves are too large? I still have that ivyGen file open so that’s easily fixable if you get back to me in time 
EDIT: I’ll just save the smaller leaf version and see what you say
Yes, maybe the leaves are too big
Is this still too much?
You’ve made some great improvements … I’m mixed on the Ivy, because it kind of begins to overwhelm the scene. I would at least test using a lot less of it and see what you think. At minimum I would agree with juanrav about the size of it.
This is pretty out there, but what if you took 1 single cell towards the back and actually lit it … like someone was still locked up there
If you looking for more stuff to fill up the scene, you could model an old beat up prisoner mattress, and maybe throw a couple of those out on floor of either the main floor or one of the balcony floors.
I like the idea of someone still being locked in there, but I’m going for more of a vibe that all life cleared out a long time ago (aside from rats and plants). I considered mattresses earlier, but I thought they’re too big an ugly and making one look both realistic, and worn down enough would be near impossible.
Your ivy suggestion seems worth trying out. I tried having very little ivy in there earlier but it doesn’t quite have the right effect. It looks strange just having a few ivy trails going everywhere. I’ll test out making the leaves smaller and post the results and see what you and others think after that.
how about making a different type of plants on the floor as on the walls. patches of grass maybe.
(edit) also, how about breaking out one or more of the window panes. to let nature in.
Okay here’s the update with the smaller leaves. Is it better or will I definitely have to chop a few ivy branches out? I am personally quite satisfied with this.
The smaller leaves is a good improvement. I would go with your gut instinct if you think it’s finished.
It’s more or less there I think. I’ll wait a bit for the CGsociety people to give their comments and then I’ll publish this. All further criticism is most definitely welcome though. I’ll put a little post on here saying when it’s final so until then everyone is more than welcome to fire away with their feedback. After that time there really is no chance of any improvements being made because I need to send it out to people, make videos with it etc.
i was looking at pics and some prisons have chain link fences on the upper floors to keep inmates from fall over rails?
thought i would give this prison modeling a shot i mean not this one but, my own design.
i started on mine and did a fence with a black background
the node setup is for the fence
The chain linked faces seem interesting. My only problem with them would be they would blend in too easily, which is something I like about the bright yellow posts I have there instead. Also remember that this is quite an old prison, and back then they would just have bars instead of chains.
I’ll keep it in mind if I feel like it needs a change though.
i’m going to render my scene to see if i can see my fence.
i might have to make the texture bigger so i can see them
Something about the railing shader isn’t sitting right with me. It seems too shiny and the color is pretty saturated compared to everything else. Like it’s made of polished brass. Maybe mix some more diffuse in, or darken it somewhat? Also, some light shafts or glare from the window might look nice, considering how bright and bloom-y it is. Also, personally, I wouldn’t use quite so much chromatic aberration, although that is a pretty subjective thing.
ok it looks good so far
i’ll delete this tommarow
just trying to give you an idea of what it looks like with fence
as long as the fence has gloss on it and light hits it you can see it and you can change the color of gloss to brown for a rust look and ajust to where you can see
[ATTACH=CONFIG]338361[/ATTACH]
Ah right okay. I could give this a go although I don’t know if it will fit in… we’ll see 
I’ll have to start on it tomorrow/today, it’s 2AM where I am and I need sleep 
Thanks for the help today guys, definitely a very productive day for this project. I’ll post an update in the morning!
A lot of great progress in a short time. Some thoughts, take what you like ignore the ret
ivy leaves may still be too large. They are the only object in the scene that offers an absolute known scale and they will greatly affect how large surrounding objects feel.
Ivy is a creeper plant, it loves to climb walls and rails, and tends not to grow over flat surfaces. Consider grass, weed patches on the main floor.
consider small cracks in the floor where Mother Nature has crushed through.
maybe a couple pools of water as nature takes hold, in the corner.
shader on railings looks off, experiment some. They also seem bent too much. This the opposite of most renders which have perfectly straight lines, but Steele will stand the test of time. Maybe thy are too bent, my eye wanders to them , questioning it.
the window light is very blown out, and the darks are pure black, possibly too much so. Overall the contrast works, but think about toning he blown out light and filling the darks.
Explain a little how you dealing with the faded background, is it a mist pass, volumetric scattering, or just a bit of photoshopping. I like it, and might even go further. The scene too short fr atmosphic effect, but a steaming pool of water might fog out the back.
make a small group of cubes, maybe subdivided, and skewed once, noise grime. Half dark brown, half transparent. Create hair systems and distribute ten or twenty thousand , random sizing, barely large enough to notice. Almost subliminal they are so small. Geometric dirt and noise.
Do a couple tests with a slightly higher Gaussian filter, maybe 2-2.5. Soften the edges.
Really nice work, and excellent job of taking ideas and critique and actually using it.
sorry, I’m away from home on an iPad with auto compete.
This is going to take some time but I’ll get on it. Thanks! Oh and the faded background was originally from using volume scattering, but I turned it into a compositing effect many renders ago because of the render times and noise.
