Ongoing - Old Water Jar / New Late Empire Roman Shield

Something Old: A Water Jar - Just rediscovered one of the first models I made, an Asian water jar with wooden lid and coconut scoop. It wasn't UV mapped so I started playing with some Poser procedural textures. I was having fun with that, and decided to incorporate them into a little scene - Behemoth preparing to play a little joke on F202 Dollie. Here's a small version (full size cropped version at DeviantArt, DAZ3D and Renderosity)...

Something New: A Late Empire Roman Shield - My first version of a Later Empire Roman shield is modeled - size and shape based on another one of the Duras Europos shields. The metal edging may not be historically inaccurate (rawhide edging was apparently more common - metal was more usual in earlier periods), but I just felt like trying to model it! The blazon design is a simple Chi Ro, based on a picture I vaguely recollect(?) from when I was a kid (so probably historically inaccurate too!). Poser 6 renders (3 separate ones overlaid) below - I'm very pleased with this so far! (But I just realised that in my whole runtime I've got nothing that even approximates to a Roman legionary's clothing...)

These shields were apparently covered with linen or leather and then painted, so I used my simple DMS again (I far prefer the 'worn' look): the 'chi ro' image (red on pale yellow - sort of old paint) is the upper layer, and a linen (just a 'Weave' 3D texture node into the bump channel) is the lower layer; the wear mask is the usual one (the result looks good at some sizes, but is prone to moiré patterns at others). The metal bits are a very simple metal shader I'm playing with (colours, a bit of noise for bump, and a smidgen of reflection).