WIP - lighting and surfacing

[helentr]

Trying out various lighting settings. I think this turned out better. High GI for the terrain and all the fake internal scattering and dark power for clouds that I could get away with. And at last I have altocumulus clouds I can live with. Reducing blue sky density helped.
The ground surfacing is helped with a second small-scale power fractal terrain and very small fake stones (the ones you can't see).
I know the vegetation distribution is not so good (the trees look like lost souls ...).

Helen

[Oshyan]

Wow, those clouds are superb! Aside from the tree distribution (and scale?) issue you mentioned this is a very nice scene overall. But the clouds definitely stand out as the best aspect in my opinion - virtually photorealistic.

- Oshyan

[bigben]

Very nice  clouds.  I like the bare ground too, both texture and lighting.

[dhavalmistry]

very nice image...great clouds and ground texture....

the grass is too green considering that the ground is bare....maybe more dried up look to grass would do good to the image....

[rcallicotte]

Very realistic lighting.  Wow. 

[neon22]

That IS nice :-)

[helentr]

Thank you for the comments.
The trees' scale was checked with the 1 metre sphere, Oshyan. I rather think it is the view angle (default of 60 degrees) that gives this impression.
I am not too pleased with the grass anyway, dhavalmistry.
I think bigben had found a way to change the color of grass by areas, or do I remember wrong?

Helen

[bigben]

.......
I think bigben had found a way to change the color of grass by areas, or do I remember wrong?

Helen

In the simplest case you can just use a basic surface with a child of a different colour. The fractal scale of the child's breakup can be adjusted to mix up the colour of the grass.

You could always copy the surfacing from my grass object http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1187.0 which splits the nodes into separate "functionality"... 2 separate grass colours and a BW distribution shader to control the mixing of the colours.  One advantage to this approach is that it lets you concentrate on each function without affecting the other two.

I think the other thing that might throw people's perception of scale out is the amount of bare ground, and the detail level of the terrain. Depending on how I look at the image I can see the trees as either too big or the correct size. I think this will be fairly common in scenes without objects of more recognisable scaling e.g. a person or a building.