Feast for the Least

[masonspappy]

My entry into the Rendo Winter contest.  (didn't win anything but did work out a few new techniques to make this).
Background trees and saplings are xFrog, heavily modified in Blender.
Church, bridge and foreground objects created in Blender and textured in Crazybump.
Most animals were low-poly objects found on the web, with extra texturing via Crazybump.
The horse actually was a low-poly,  broken-down nag with huge feet (don't know what the point of that was) that looked more like a donkey,  and had to be re-sculpted in Blender.

[ADE]

looks nice in a cartoonish way, church and trees out of scale but so what. Looks sweet

[luvsmuzik]

Won't criticize what I cannot do.
I like how you have mastered lighting the lamps and achieving some glow effects! The modified objects look great to me also. As far as scaling, where I live we have trees almost that tall compared to structures. One in fact took out a roof once.
Good one!

[masonspappy]

Won't criticize what I cannot do.

Actually, please do. If you haven't seen my rants elsewhere in these forums  then consider this an invitation to criticize anything in my images that you see fit. My goal is to get better at this and honest feedback helps me achieve that.

[bobbystahr]

Sweet render

[DocCharly65]

I would given it a price and if it would have been a christmas card, I would have bought it

I like the not too hyperrealistic look and the light. It's a peaceful, hopeful and festive look which I like very much.

[Dune]

It's a nice and different setup, almost theatrical. But you asked for it  C&C; my main problem I have with the snow. It looks like it's frozen over. If that's what you had in mind, you succeeded. But it doesn't really look like snow to me. There was a snow/ice tgc years back, which I still use, though modified a bit here and there. No need for RT-reflections, so faster as well.
This is what I use for snow, basically. But you can add little PF clumps (even fake stones), or wavy patterns (ridged or perlin). Inside you'd have to link a distance shader to your camera in bothe defaults (for shiners).

[masonspappy]

Well, I think you guys are hitting the nail(s) on the head.
I'm striving for a look that has lots of detail, and is nearly real, but isn't quite real.  Turns out that's a lot harder to achieve than I thought would be.
@Dune, thanks for the C&C  and tgc. Where I grew up, it was common for snow to thaw during the day and re-freeze at night. This resulted in a slick, reflective layer and always reminded me of bitter cold.  I'm still trying to master fluffy snow, but I just don't do fluffy very well      

Thanks again folks!

[luvsmuzik]

You are very correct about that crusty surface masonspappy. That is part of what I liked about this entire image. Feeding the wildlife due to the slick on top.

My animals sometime have a rough go of it in that weather. One of my cats was furious a week or so ago, sliding over the snow and nowhere to "go". Fell three times getting from concrete to grass covered snow. (young and insists on being outdoors)