Green Hill

[Walli]

Because I don´t want to wait another year, I now declare the picture as finished ;-)
Actually it´s rare that I go back and finish an older, abandoned project. But this time I had to ;-)

For full resolution, click here: Green hill

[inkydigit]

I am glad you did not lunch this out!!!

[Oshyan]

Beautiful work. Glad to see this finished at last! Lots of attention to detail overall. The empty suit of armor is... funny. I guess it's meant that way.

I'd be interested to see this with an "HDR" processing (alternate tone mapping). If you saved the EXR you could play with it in Photoshop or Photomatix. Could be interesting...

- Oshyan

[Walli]

I already made some manual tonemapping (terrain brightened and some more contrast), but I can run it through Photomatix. I actually seldom use it for renderings, don´t know why.

[Oshyan]

Photomatix is tuned for real-world photo data so the results are often not pleasing, but it's worth a try IMO.

- Oshyan

[choronr]

I always enjoy seeing uphill compositions. This is very pleasing and inspirational.

[Markal]

Sorry, my inexperienced thoughts....
The church in the background looks like it is hand drawn...that is penciled in...I guess not enough detail. The edges are too straight and the perspective seems wrong.
The grasses and flowers are very natural and look fantastic. I really hate to be critical of an artist whose art I have used in my images....your trees, grasses and flowers are extraordinary....please take my criticism lightly. I mean no harm and am trying not to offend....I don't know how else to say it.....Peace!

[Dune]

I have a little crit as well, but first of all; I love the vegetation! Superb variation and lighting. I don't see a problem with the church, but the line of grass in the center of the path is too 'obvious' (I don't know how to explain, not integrated enough perhaps) for some reason. And the sky is bleached out in the light parts!

[Walli]

Critique is always welcome!
About the path - I guess this is what happens, if a scene gets rusty on the harddisk and then gets finished in a last rush. I can remember that I had this on my list back then, wanted to add some higher grasses in the center and then some more lower populations , meandring along the center. I simply forgot about it.
About the church - actually there are no straight lines and the perspective should be okay. But I feel pretty much the same, the church feels a bit alien on top of the hill!

[Walli]

Okay, here is a tonemapped version (Photomatix). Had to fiddle around with the settings, because by default you get really "strange" results.

http://www.wallis-eck.de/bigger3/greenhill_tonemapped.jpg

[Oshyan]

Thanks for posting the tone mapped version Walli. I wouldn't say it's an overall improvement, but it does bring some nice dynamics to the scene and get rid of the blown out sky. Of course with a real camera in this scene the sky might well be overexposed without using some kind of tone mapping.

- Oshyan

[Henry Blewer]

I like the way the sky was handled. The landscape looked better before the tonemapping. The armor is curious, but looks well shaded.

[dandelO]

While everything looks really lovely in its own right, Walli, I don't think I quite 'get it'. Hmmm.
I love each separate element that makes up the scene, the plants especially, but I'm not sure I understand the overall meaning. Maybe I'm not supposed to!
Beautiful rendering, anyway!

[choronr]

The meaning I suspect is that a warrior removed his battle garb out of respect before entering into the church. And I believe Walli has made a large improvement here.

[Hannes]

The knight has a serious diarrhea and sits behind the camera.