Need some help with a scene setup.

[Draigr]

Heya all. I'm back again, and I got another deadline type render. Got a coupla days to pull it off in addition to a paintover job with the main scene elements.

I'd like to have to avoid painting or modifying the actual terrain and cloud section as much as possible as that's very time consuming.

The terrain will be covered up with foliage and the like, so don't worry about that for now, I'm actually satisfied with the overall shape. What I do have issue with however is the lighting. The placement is exactly where I want it, however, this is supposed to be a stormy scene, with plenty of scattering under the cloud layers, but at the same time a gloomy atmosphere overall. I also can't work out how to get a black or very dark sky.

Just imagine, cinematic rainy shot and you'll be around where I'm aiming for.

Nothing I try really seems to be doing what I want. And I don't have enough experience to really go much further.

Water's kinda screwing me up a bit too. It's ok now, I sorta bumbled along till it got somewhere I wanted, but it's still not really giving me the right vibes.

So any thoughts would be very helpful!

[Draigr]

Oh. Well, ummm... This is a little embarrassing. I seem to have solved my problem. Boosting that altocumulous layer I stuck in and then fiddling with the haze layer seems to have gotten something.

So uh, yeah, a coupla quick render ups I just did.

Tell me what you think.

[cyphyr]

Looking good for a wip. Not much to suggest till we see more where you want to take the image (and you'll probably not need sugestions at that point )
Don't forget with overcast and darker scenes to save as exr. Purest may disagree but you will have much more control over the final look.
Good luck
Richard

[Draigr]

I've tested saved files with .exr format, I'm not entirely sure what's meant with it. While I'm aware of what the format does, I've never really tried to apply or use it before.

[Dune]

Looking very dramatic indeed, the latter two are a bit too dark IMO. You should raise the cloud quality, and probably the atmosphere quality to get rid of the grain, though. Did you check RayTrace Atmosphere? The water/waves can be changed by adding displaced (perhaps blended by other PF's) power fractals before the water shader, but you might know that.

[Themodman101]

Thats pretty awesome, ive wanted to do a rainy day type render as well. But its quite tough to get the sky looking right without wasting hours with render times that skyrocket once your sky gets really complex.. Though I guess its nothing a little ajustment to render settings cant fix.

Personally I like the middle one

[Draigr]

Hey guys, thanks for the advice. And while I know a few things. I really am completely new to this program. In all likely hood I DON'T know what you've suggested.

Although, I do know how to optimise renders

Here's an older update. I'm currently seeding those hills with various free tree populations I've picked up from XFrog while I try to work out how to get to customer support about the fact that my downloads of their packages cut out at the 20% mark or thereabouts. Tell me what you think. I have yet to figure out how to do terrain properly.

[Henry Blewer]

You can look for examples of various terrains in the file sharing area. That should help with your landscape. Just look at the different shader setups. Many of the shading techniques can be used in the Terrain node area for more dramatic displacements.
It does take practice to get a good workflow.