Arid

[AP]

Well into the desert near a dry lake bed and plateau in the distance.

Edit: Updated render.

[archonforest]

Wow this looks pretty cool!
My only input here is the look of the middle tree. It kinda looks plastic or something imho. Maybe the light are cheating on my eyes...?

[mhaze]

Nice indeed. the sand is a good effort and the grass is excellent - but - I don't like the trees, they look like plastic models.

[Kadri]

I like it.
A basic more brighter texture on the trees might be better indeed.

[AP]

The trees were a first try at a dead and dry tree. I could fix the texturing, add some displacement and brightening them would make more sense. They do seem a bit to dark here.

[Kadri]

Still i found these photos:
http://www.geeknaut.com/images/ipad-retina/2012/03/desert-tree.jpg
http://skjtravel.net/images/stories/southafrica/Namibia/dead_deadvlei1_640.jpg
https://pixabay.com/static/uploads/photo/2012/11/06/15/40/tree-64311_960_720.jpg

[AP]

Yes, it was supposed to look more like those. That was the idea but easy enough to fix.

[AP]

Updated. Refer to the first post.

[Dune]

I like this, Chris. Very nice pattern and layout. To get the shrub to mix more into the sandy environment you might try adding some desert/sand color to the branches, very patchy. Like sand caught into the shrub.

[AP]

An interesting idea and a good one.

[DocCharly65]

In fact the trees look a bit strange.
But I love the ground!

[AP]

The dust did not work well. It is to difficult to explain as to why. I made the scene somewhat more green and fixed a few other minor segments.

[TheBadger]

there is a lot of great stuff here, chris.

The background is super, from the plants to the distant slope. Like the mid ground break up a lot too. The foreground is all individually nice as well, all the elements I mean.

My crit is that the foreground needs to be broken up just a bit though. I guess everything just needs a tad of blending into one another. They feel to individual I think. So for example the the displacement of the dirt is really great, I just think it seems to be to separated from everything that it is with. Maybe just another dirt/dust layer played over parts? And while the plants look pretty near perfect in the background, they seem to be too green the the fore.

Maybe just an issue of continuing to layer on more and more bits of info, until to is saturated with details that a impartial audience would all ignore but also convince them of the reality... Or something 

ba! People should all just learn 3d so they can appreciate the work better! 

[AP]

I may re-explore this again someday soon. This certainly was quite the test to see what could be done based on several photographs researched over.

[Dune]

ba! People should all just learn 3d so they can appreciate the work better!

Yes, sometimes they call it photo's, and I don't know if I should take that as a compliment or not