A garden growing wild somewhere in the Roman Empire.

[Marty]

Having fun with a marble sculpture and some mediterranean plants in making a picture of a garden gone wild somewhere in the Roman Empire. 

[TheBadger]

Like your idea a lot. I like how the statue looks too. Are those grape vines growing from the bowl?

I'm a fan of the themes, so I vote that you continue

[Marty]

Thanks! It not vine, it's some small ground plant. I did not like the background I created on my top pic. Can not understand how I could be okay with that mountain and cloud yesterday (really gotta work on mastering clouds: Until then I'll make them small and easy). The foreground I found okay so I kept it with a little twist in camera angle and an adding of DoF:

[Dune]

This is much better! One thing that bothers me is the repetitiveness of the trees, the screwing of the branches. What if you put just a line of them up (5 in sight or so), like a roadside area in Tuscany, with a view through them to rolling distant hills with some patches of trees?

[Marty]

Thanks! Agree. Looked up some real world pictures of these trees and they do not come of like that. I loaded the models in a new file: The screwing of the branches becomes so visible because of the light setting I use in the images above and because of tranclucency. With a little rotation of population instances, tranclucency off, and another sun setting, they look like real world versions of the species. Rolling Tuscan hills is a great idee!

[Marty]

Tranclucency had little to do with it. But if you have light on from behind the camera on these trees and you have them big they do not come of great anyway. You get some non-real look with repetiveness between different models etc. Great trees for a certain light setting and for some distance.

[Marty]

I got really tired of this scene now so I did not go for a broad remake a la Toscana Hills. Just a quick-fix. Compared to the top-image (which I now think is horrible) I felt that this is an okay solution to the scene: Later on (when I know more about Terragen) I will try to make some grand roman landscape scene with sculptures (maybe buildings) because I like the idee:

[Dune]

This is a great improvement! Do get your hands on Iceland now!

[DannyG]

Statue is well lit. Scene in general looks very real with the new trees

[zaxxon]

This has become a very nice image, you've made some great changes and it really is fine work. Excellent!

[choronr]

This is looking much better now ...keep on!

[Marty]

Thanks everybody! Great to hear/know that a quick-fix can somewhat save a scene! Iceland as a contest is a cool NWDA idee. Strange place

[DocCharly65]

Great work. The new version is much better! 

[Hannes]

This looks really good. A huge improvement compared to the first image! I'd love to see the last one with soft shadows and a little more contrast.

[TheBadger]

Agree. Great finish.