some new work on a river

[Dune]

I'm working on a new series of reconstructions of a low area, how it changed from one era into another, with climate changes influencing biomes. Five reconstructions based on scientific data, all from same camera at 55m. Here's 2 of them as WIP, so they need more work.

There's one thing that nags me in PT; grain in the water. Despite high quality of clouds and atmo and raised subdiv. AA=6.

[WAS]

These look great so far. Well done.

As for the grain, this could be a by product of the blurring in the reflections. Try clearer reflections. These blurred reflections are meaent for motion, which since there is no motion captured anywhere it actually looks weird. Almost composite-y. For a artistic approach it's fine, but for realism it bothers me.

Additionally, the scene isn't over-exposed looking which would also add blurring to water reflections.

[mhaze]

Nice work! You always use vegetation so well!

[Dune]

Thanks. I'll try a version with 1.5 exposure, and 000 highlight spread (instead of 0.005).

[DocCharly65]

Nice work! You always use vegetation so well!

I can only echo this!
One more of the reasons I love your renders so much: They look always so good that I just want to be there in real life

[Dune]

Thank you.

Too bad the client wants the river in winter   and flowing the other way

[Stormlord]

In the first picture the shoreline doesn't look real. The white water in the lower part at the beachline isn't realistic imo.
In the secound picture there are some maps missed, some trees are very bright greenish in the upper middle.

Nevertheless, the colors look very natural and realistic. The whole picture is a great one! Very realistic!
Would love to get so realistic results in my scenes...

STORMLORD

[WAS]

Yeah I don't know if you meed foam on a river. Never see it here, high or low season. We got lots of rivers here.

Scratch: I have seen it in sewage run off areas, that icky foam stuff.

[Dune]

Thanks guys, that's usable feedback! I need to redraw the river maps anyway, so I'll add a map for better foam (this was just random). The next iteration needs to be a spring scene, with snow remains and faster flowing river, so some foam will probably be in place where the water hits the sand/gravel. Greenery will be a lot less too.

[Dune]

Another iteration. I need to find out whether the river had any subsidiaries from further 'high' country, but this is it for now. And I need to make some swimming reindeer, as these are just tilted a bit in deep water. Hooray for editing once again!
Rough water in PT still goes very slow, even on my new rig, so I think I'll decrease roughness, or render water in SR. This is SR, btw.

[WAS]

Wow, that looks really good. The winter scene actually adds to it imo. The new water surface is stunning.

[Stormlord]

YES !!!
Perfect and very convincing scenery....

The water flow looks so much better and the scene in its colors are really pretty natural. Excellent Render.

STORMLORD

[Kadri]

Very nice work Ulco.

[Dune]

Thanks guys! It actually went very fast; the snow patches were the first seed I tried, and it came out well enough. The river itself is a drawn mask and I used the greys to warp the stream of subtle foam over Y (very strongly, to get some lines in it), also added it to the volume density for some silt flows, and to smooth the waves in shallow areas.

[DocCharly65]

Even in the dreary season it looks incredibly good and realistic! I like this version too!