At the beach.

[René]

Figure: Daz3D
Cruise ship: Herminio Nieves
Vegetation: created with ngplant

[Dune]

Nice! Crisp and powerful!

[WAS]

Very nice image. I do agree with comments on FB about the grass, seems to be glowing a bit too much, but other than that this is superb.

[DocCharly65]

Very nice!

[René]

I have struggled with the lighting of the grass. The problem is threefold. First: The grass has several shaders. Because I thought the colors were too dark, instead of adjusting each color individually to make them lighter, I used a color adjustment shader to correct them all at once. This probably gave some colors a value higher than '1', so light was emitted.
Second: The grass patches do not have much volume, so there is not much area to receive shadow.
Third: The sand color is very light and therefore reflects a lot of light, exactly to the spot on the grass where you would expect shadow.

I've now set the reflection of the grass to 0, didn't use a color adjust, and increased the population by 50%. It looks better, but not much.

[zaxxon]

Great render Rene! I'm not in love with the scene (Cruise Ship Phobia big time), but as Dune points out, "crisp and powerful". Indeed! Your cirrus cloud experiments have borne beautiful fruit: really, really good! I'm pretty amazed at your nplant grass, I had overlooked that one, the images on the site weren't very exciting, but your grass looks as good as the Quixel models to my eye. Fine work!

[mhaze]

Brilliant stuff. Great sky, rocks and atmosphere.

[gao_jian11]

Pretty！

[Tangled-Universe]

Great stuff again Rene and so well executed.
I sometimes appreciate weird aspects of a render and for this one it are the flaky small stones in the shadows of the boulders.
To me it really shows that the shader colours and settings are well chosen.
I also like the colours of the water and how it interplays with the colours of the sandy beach.
The rocks are slightly unrealistic maybe. I remember you made some limestone-like gray smooth rocks a while ago, which look really good.
Perhaps these would fit this scene very well too, don't know?

[Hannes]

Wow, really beautiful!! I didn't notice the brightness of the grass, it didn't bother me, and I like the rocks very much. The only thing, that comes into my mind, which could be improved is the very greenish color of the water. I'm not sure, but from this flat viewing angle I guess the water would be more blueish than so intensely green.

[Stormlord]

The atmosphere is really fantastic. I'm really impressed..., also very natural colours and well balanced!
Except the bright shallow water at the beachline, they are exaggerated, but I guess this is made intenionally?
The person is barefoot (wears no shoes), why there are footprints in the foreground?

STORMLORD

[René]

Great stuff again Rene and so well executed.
    I sometimes appreciate weird aspects of a render and for this one it are the flaky small stones in the shadows of the boulders.
    To me it really shows that the shader colours and settings are well chosen.
    I also like the colours of the water and how it interplays with the colours of the sandy beach.
    The rocks are slightly unrealistic maybe. I remember you made some limestone-like gray smooth rocks a while ago, which look really good
    Perhaps these would fit this scene very well too, don't know?

Thanks Martin. These rocks are based on the gray rocks you are referring to. I modified those to look more like yellow-orange rocks that you often see along the Mediterranean Sea.

[René]

Wow, really beautiful!! I didn't notice the brightness of the grass, it didn't bother me, and I like the rocks very much. The only thing, that comes into my mind, which could be improved is the very greenish color of the water. I'm not sure, but from this flat viewing angle I guess the water would be more blueish than so intensely green.

Thanks, Hannes. That's right, at this angle there would be much more blue reflected from the sky, although I have seen green in photos as well. I chose green because I thought that color was appropriate. So it was more of an artistic choice.

[René]

The atmosphere is really fantastic. I'm really impressed..., also very natural colours and well balanced!
Except the bright shallow water at the beachline, they are exaggerated, but I guess this is made intenionally?
The person is barefoot (wears no shoes), why there are footprints in the foreground?

STORMLORD: Yes the color of the shallow water is intentionally exaggerated. The man is wearing sandals, however, they are sunk into the sand. Perhaps that should have been less. However, it is such a small detail that I did not expect anyone to notice it, except perhaps a forensic examiner.

[Hannes]

After I have read your comments, I'd say make the shallow water just a tad darker and less green (like in your reference image), and it would be perfect at least to me. And those rocks are fantastic. I have seen lots of those in Greece.