Desolate alps

[EoinArmstrong]

Plants by XFrog

Edit: used HDR toning, and added blur and noise for a photographic "feel"

[Oshyan]

Nice Eoin, your TG2/3 work is evolving quickly! Very nice ground, rock, and distant mountain textures. I think the plants look a bit "plastic" though, and I suspect this may be due to the somewhat flat lighting. It looks like there are either some fill lights, or a high "Strength on Surfaces" setting for the Enviro Light, which is evening out the light a lot, putting a lot of underglow on that aloe vera-type plant in the center for example. Either that or maybe it's the HDR toning that has flattened things out a bit, it does tend to do that. Deserts are bright, but this usually just makes contrasts that much stronger, so I'd suggest perhaps allowing for a bit brighter brights and darker darks, higher contrast in other words.

- Oshyan

[Antoine]

Very nice work and great shaders !

[EoinArmstrong]

Yeah strength on surfaces is set to 2.24, to enhance detail on the mountains.  I'll give it a bash with it lowered.

[Kadri]

Looks like the scaling is off Eoin.
That cactus for example looks like 1/3 of the mountains in the back.

Other then this and what Oshyan said it looks nice and i am curious how the next one will be.

[Dune]

I have to agree with Kadri, the mountains in themselves look giant, but the foreground looks close, and the distinction between them is a bit strange. Maybe it's only the plants, as Kadri suggests. Looking forward to your next iteration.

[EoinArmstrong]

Ok - increased contrast, reduced the size of the plants (the main cactus is still pretty big - Giant Saguaro can grow up to 70 feet).  I don't want to make it too much smaller, as I'd lose compositional balance (I think).  I also reduced the spread of the soft shadows.

[Antoine]

This update image looks even more realistic. The only thing you may want to change is the scale between the mountain and the plain. If I look at the very far bushes (near the mountain) then the mountain looks no more than 75 to 100 meters high which is very small for this kind of formation (we can see some old alpine glacier curves which require much more space).
Other than that this is a really photorealistic image.

[choronr]

Your progression of this image is showing some very nice results Eoin. What I would do is bring the Saguaro up front closer to the camera. Use the 'Landmark' object to set the scale of the plant. Set it at 1 (this being a little more than one meter. Suppose the cactus is 16 feet tall. Then you should be able to gauge the height of it.

I have some Saguaro cacti on Mediafire that was created by 'Lightning' some years ago that you might want to download and try. I helped him with the models be shaping and colors/textures by sending him some shots I took in the desert. Attached is one of the photos.

Bob 

[EoinArmstrong]

Okies - I'll reduce the scale of the ground and everything on it... Bob, do you have a link to those models?

It'll be done sometime this week.  Thanks for your help, all!

[choronr]

Okies - I'll reduce the scale of the ground and everything on it... Bob, do you have a link to those models?

It'll be done sometime this week.  Thanks for your help, all!

Yes I have. I'm in the middle of a chore right now and taking a break. I will get back to you later with the link. Looking forward to your progress on this.

[choronr]

Eoin, send me an email at: choronr@msn.com and I'll send the link over to you. I've not used MediaFire in some time and the format has changed a bit. I've noted that I have a zipped file there that contains three different models with all the texture files.

[EoinArmstrong]

Last go at this.

I remove the rock pop at the rock colour wasn't playing ball for some reason.  Thanks to Bob for the extra Cacti!

[choronr]

Looking very good Eoin, glad the cactus worked out for you.

There are several good threads here in the forum regarding rocks/stones color - and, a few really work good. Try a search here and you will find them.

[Oshyan]

Theeere we go, much better sense of scale! Only small crit is the clouds are rather noisy now. Shouldn't be too hard to fix though, if you want to.

- Oshyan