tundra/taiga

[Hannes]

Excellent, Ulco!
I agree with pac. I like the first one most. The clouds look fantastic. You changed something in the sky for the second and third image, didn't you?
So I'd prefer the first one with a little more variation in the trees and the grass.

[Dune]

Thanks for your comments, guys. Very helpful. I indeed changed the sky for the second batch. First one was with the default (for TG3) where the haze exp height is 2000 instead of 3000, I changed that to the old default. But changed it back again now. Hit seed for the cumulus a few times as well. They're large clouds 4500m, but with a low gamma (0.25), so they're sparse. Plus a tiny bit of localized low cloud, without the fractal.
The scene is getting a bit full, but here's a new iteration. Soft shadows (1), but for the sake of speed with a low sample number (3). Rough terrain, so it's hardly visible anyway.
The rocks are large (10m), so you know. One branch seems to hit it...mmm.
I'll do another one today, I think, with some water in front.

[lat 64]

TheBackgrounds in all the images are rather great. Agree with Frank about the mid right area.

Its looking good Ulco. I like the area chosen as the subject. Tundras are beautiful places in the spring, summer and early fall. I don't believe I have ever seen a documentary, or photo series of one that didn't make we want to visit it.

For true!
These are places I grew up in. I love the raven in the last one
A couple hints about the trees:  they are Black spruce, Picea mariana. They really do have a rough, very dark black bark and they vary in size considerably in the same stand. Some in wet areas are no taller than a man and be many years old while others nearby on better soil might be 5-10 meters. They can clump together quite dense–almost choking each other or stand alone like you have shown.

you do awesome work. The sedge grass and shrubs are convincing. The clouds you made are perfect for the hot high pressure systems we get here far inland in the summer.

The sun angle always seems to be low up here, Which makes a yellow atmosphere usually. Even on the 21st of June at noon the sun is just at 65 degress in the sky. But for most of the evening until very late it is a lazy, yellow afternoon feeling.

I wish I could do this work 

Russ

[Dune]

Thanks very much for your comprehensive reply, Russ. Very useful! I'll do some changes. By the way, the raven is a buzzard (I had it for sale at NWDA, which will be online again soon), but you couldn't know that. I might make a raven though, nice idea.

[Oshyan]

3rd one is my fav too. Latest one seems a bit over-bright and lacking in contrast (flat-ish lighting). But there's nice progress and aspects to all of them. Probably a combo of 1 and 3 would be ideal, I like the foreground rocks and dead bushes best in 3.

- Oshyan

[Dune]

The over-brightness is probably the quick automatic color adjust in Irfanview. I have to do that more carefully of course.

[Bjur]

Beautiful!

[choronr]

Agree, the best thus far. And, love those rocks. Telling your procedure of creating them would be helpful.

[Dune]

I can't share a tgc as it has some new nodes, but it's quite easy actually. I used a default shader as basis for color and displacement input, which is used as texture for 10m stones.
Inside the default shader I made 2 lines of PF's; one for color input, one for displacement input. The one for color input has some colored fractal mixes and 2 added surface shaders (for ochre and greenish-grey colors) set to 50% coverage and blended by some 'lichen' PF's (hard, small billows, a bit warped).
The displacement line is a small scale (2/10/0.1) warped billow fractal with Z and Z stretched x3 (color roughnes set to 1), then 2 transform shaders, then a merge shader. The first transform shader is set to rotate Z by 80 degrees, the second to rotate 20/50/-90, and change the fractal XYZ scalars by 0.15/4/0.15, thus changing the fractal from horizontal to vertical. Then mix normal or play with versions. Finally I merged a tiny (0.1/0.4/0.005) fractal with low color contrast (0.2) and high color of 0.2. This kind of adds little specks to the main color variation. So it's all done in color space, not displacement. This color is set as input for displacement (2m), with offset of 1m.

[Hannes]

This is stunning! I really like the yellow lichen, but I'm not sure about the dark red colour. It looks a bit like blood.
I envy all you beta testers already playing around with the new version!

[mhaze]

Agree with Hannes, this is excellent.  The added water really contributes to the tundra feel.  For me the red looks like some vandal has attacked the rocks with spray paint!

[choronr]

Excellent! What I would do with the red is to adjust the color to a lavender/grayish tone. However, your color choice is not uncommon when it comes to lichen.

[Dune]

It's a murder scene  I know about the red, my wife also said to get rid of it. I will. On the other hand, stones may contain some iron... rusting away.

[RArcher]

Great looking scene, very natural!  Nothing wrong with the red at all though I would perhaps make it a little rougher in texture.
[attach=1]

[Bjur]

You all are right but pls give that man a well earned and maybe needed break after he was figthing teeth and nails (i guess) for this/his great scene..