Towers

[Axe]

This is what I came up with after following the excellent "Towers" tutorial.  I got (more or less) what I was aiming for with the sort of limestone towers with hanging plants you'd see off the coast of Thailand.  The water took forever to render - in there a way to stop the renderer from processing transparency?
3 populations of X-frog plants,
2 populations of a hanging bush that I made in OnyxTree.

Comments and critique welcome.  This is my third image with Terragen, so pointers are especially desired!

Thanks for looking!
Axe

[Dune]

In a scene like this you don't need any transparency in the water, Axe. Just set it to zero and the result will be quite similar, but a lot faster.

[Axe]

Guess it wasn't the transparency that was extending the render time as I had turned it down to 0.  Maybe the amount of reflection due to the smaller scale noise (PF) on the surface.  Over 2/3 of the render time was devoted to the bottom 20% of the image.

Not sure why the waterline mark didn't show up on the tower on the left while it showed fine on the other landforms.  It had the same max altitude constraint across the entire scene.


Thanks for your input Dune.