some new work on a river

[Dune]

Semi-final WIP's. Added some White-tailed eagles, and hunters in the winter scene, and changed the seed of the water, so it's rougher in the outside bends.
The summer version is the same river a few thousand years earlier. No post in either render.

[WAS]

These are looking wonderful. Only suggestion is better textures for the burned trees. Maybe mix in some bark texture with Y stretched perlin mask for the burned stuff, and maybe a little tad greyer of a burn colour.

[DocCharly65]

Wonderful, Ulco. I like each one of them!

[Dune]

Thanks. I agree about the burnt trees; they are too black. Some need some life in them as well, half-burnt, with some green trying to survice in the tops perhaps. I need to do some research regarding burnt woods and their recovery (how fast).

[WAS]

Depends on species too. Some simply can't handle much fire at all. We had a fire here on the side of the highway by our exit home, and it wasn't too bad or long, but it killed all the threes but the alder trees. The doug firs, hemlock, and maples all died just from some base damage.

Could be species, or water content. Alders here are boggy and die young from water logging. Literally rot and fall apart. They are also super fast growing (called newgrowth trees as a alder Forrest is the precursor to our temperate forests before firs and stuff move in. The alder forests help shelter the slower growing seedlings.)

May also be how they burn. Bottom up, and thus root system effect and hydraulic transpiration upwards, vs catching from atmospheric sparking top down.

[Dune]

You're right, very species and ground/soil dependent. In not too wet bogs you sometimes have fires smouldering underground for a long time, whereas in other areas fires rage 'just' across the surface. This is at the semi-dry edge of a swamp, with mainly willow species and birches (in that era), so I added both of them in a semi-burnt version. Greyer too, because the black was too much. Altitude dependent now.

[Dune]

Adjusted detail of the river, with some 'fresh carcasses' 

[WAS]

Looking really good, the only thing is, now with more scale to the scene, I think the snow needs some sort of like billows to breakup the fuzzy zones into larger to small clumps. The fuzzy fade doesn't look right with the small scale of the animals.

[Dune]

I get what you mean. A little breakup at the edges won't hurt indeed. But then I need to take care that the highest snow is more centrally, or there will be very steep, high patches. I was also thinking of have some edges melt with a different color, less white, blue-grey watery ice. I'll see.... Thanks!

[Stormlord]

THE RIVER IS MUCH BETTER !!!

Stormlord

[WAS]

I get what you mean. A little breakup at the edges won't hurt indeed. But then I need to take care that the highest snow is more centrally, or there will be very steep, high patches. I was also thinking of have some edges melt with a different color, less white, blue-grey watery ice. I'll see.... Thanks!

I think to overcome that displacement breakup I used two versions, one for melt spread, and one over that, with a smaller fuzzy inside the breakup. There was still fuzz, but with the breakup my eye wasn't caught to the transition as much. Curious what you do. Do share.

[Dune]

I ran into some trouble with previous layers containing smaller displacements, and didn't want to change the max depth of the highest snow piles (1m), so I kept it easy for myself. Just changed the size of breakup from feature scale 10m (yes, very very large) to 0.3 or so, and just used the color. It won't be noticed that it's not perfect, as you see it from above so I allow myself that little cheat. I was kind of fed up with working on it too. It ran for 9 hours and isn't even half way (5000x2500), but I set cloud quality at 1.5 and subdiv at 0.5, so even with my fast machine it's almost choking on the water.... we'll see.

[mhaze]

The water is amazing. The waves building in just the right places is masterly

[Dune]

Thanks Mick. Just a matter of drawing a nice mask in Photoshop. I used the mask for warping the streams over Y as well, but I think I already wrote that.
Here are 2 200% crops. The water was really an issue. Whereas other renders in PT took only 4 hours or so for 5000x2400px  with mpd=0.5 and AA=6, and soft shadows 2 samples), the water render really choked on those waves, and I broke it off after 10+ hours (halfway and seemingly standing still in some waterblocks). In the end I made another render in SR methode without soft shadows and pasted the water over.

I think the snow breakup is fair enough like this.

[WAS]

Breakup looks great! Also love that second crop. Looks really nice with the water reflecting the sky and such.