Mobilisation

[Antoine]

Very nice rendering !

[Hannes]

Here's the dusty one. Poor guys below the ships...
I used two cloud layers each. A thin one and a denser one.

[bobbystahr]

Here's the dusty one. Poor guys below the ships...
I used two cloud layers each. A thin one and a denser one.

now that works...they'd have breathing apparatus in their helmets so no worries....

[fleetwood]

Looking better each iteration. I'm thinking a higher amount of atmo haze would separate the flying ships from the background. Maybe you don't want to loose any of the distant city detail or planets, but the haze might place the ships more distinctly in the space. 

[Hannes]

This could work. Actually there's already a subtle blueish cloud layer in the scene to separate the foreground objects from the buildings. I'll increase the height and the density and see how it looks.

[archonforest]

astonishing work. like pretty much each version

[dorianvan]

Wow, it is looking better each time! I think a nice edition might be some heat distortion in there around the ships' "heat" source. Although, I wouldn't have a clue to how you'd do it in TG. Also, the foreground is a bit clean, maybe throw some dust around there a bit too.

[Hannes]

A hazier one.

Thinking about heat blur...

[Dune]

Very much better. But I would cool that cloud down quite a lot.

[bobbystahr]

A hazier one.

Thinking about heat blur...

Still liking it so it's still workin'

[Hannes]

In the meantime I rendered a version with a little less density in the blueish haze. It looked a tad too much to me. Not too much of a difference, but directly compared it looks better I think.

...But I would cool that cloud down quite a lot.

I don't know what you mean, Ulco 

[dorianvan]

I think he's referring to the orange-ish cloud when compared to the coolness of the upper 3/4 of the image. On the other hand, you could simple warm everything else up. Depends on your mood or which is quicker. About heat distortion, I know you can do it in post, like After Effects, but I'll bet you'll cleverly find a way in TG (if you want it of course).

[fleetwood]

Last two are much improved for me, less confusing to the eye. So now I noticed a minor thing on my monitor - fine arcs of banding in the upper blue sky areas.

[Hannes]

I see. Yes, probably the main cloud. Well, I used an increased value for the red sky decay, which "decools" the whole scene. Now that the blueish cloud layer is blueish, it's quite a bit of a contrast. I like it somehow. I could do some tests with a desaturated color of the (blueish) cloud maybe.
And regarding the heat blur, I'm not sure if we would see it, if the scene was real, because it's mainly behind the ships, but it's really tempting to create something like that. Inside TG!!!

...So now I noticed a minor thing on my monitor - fine arcs of banding in the upper blue sky areas.

Indeed. I didn't notice that before. But it's probably some image processing issue. At least mainly. Originally the rendered images (TIFF) have a size of 3000 X 1687 px. If you look VERY closely you can see some very subtle banding, which gets stronger after some resizing and color adjustments.

[j meyer]

Agree with Dorian about some foreground dust.
Heat blur mainly behind the ships sounds good, but, considering that,
why is the big dust clouds directly beneath the ships? Doesn't seem
logic to me.