Rocks (once again)

[Dune]

Two versions of rock; combinations of fake stones, voronoi diff noise and an image map. I didn't like the grass after all, so in the latest I deleted it again. The water is just a default shader, with metalness at 1, for speed. The birds are auk and guillemot. Enjoy.

[Hannes]

Awesome!! I prefer the second one. Somehow the rocks look better.
One thing I noticed: the black color of the birds is extremely dark compared to the dark areas of the rest of the scene which makes them look somehow comped in (at least in the right half of the image). If you'd make the black color a little brighter it may look more natural?

[KlausK]

That coast looks very natural. Very good.

On my computer monitor it seems as if the birds are not "affected" by the haze which makes them stand out so much.
Are they comped in after the rendering? Their colours look completely saturated against the rocks.
Or is that because of image compression maybe?

CHeers, Klaus

[Dune]

Yes, I noticed that too, though you have to take into account that they fly in front of the haze. But the texture of the birds is indeed pure white and black, which isn't right (hasty job). I have to put more time into them. But they are really sitting and flying there, not comped in.

[Dune]

Another rockface, this time with some horses.

[Hannes]

Wow, that looks really stunning! The lighting and the rockface look fantastic!
I don't know very much about horses. There are mountain horses as Google told me, but would they climb up such a terrain? Maybe some mountain goats or capricorns might look more appropriate?

[Dune]

The horses were an afterthought, just to have something happen, and give the rock a size comparison. I will get rid of them   and also make the cloud a bit thinner, as it's very dark around the lit area. I don't think I have a mountain goat, but maybe a wolf or an oil drill base or campsite will do.

[KlausK]

This is stunning!

Romanticism in the UK and the US of A featured painters which used exactely this technique of contrasting overbright spots in the landscape with brooding skies above.
The colours and the structures of the mountains are like pastells here. And the horses - even though they might seem out of place in a way - convey that romantic idea of a wild and powerful nature.
Man is just a small and insignificant part in there. I really think this is a absolute top notch picture! I wouldn`t change a thing...

CHeers, Klaus

ps: Albert Bierstadt (1830 - 1902) was a remarkable German-American painter known for his vast and luminous landscapes. He did those kind of paintings.

https://drawpaintacademy.com/albert-bierstadt/

[Dune]

Thanks Klaus. I know the guy, and I like his work. But it's too late, I've already dumped the horses and quickly build me an adobe (Indian-like) ruin, and added some wolves as new occupants. I'll keep the light, but changed the seed of clouds and coverage. And POV. To be continued....

[Dune]

There are some glitches, so this is not the end of experimenting.....
I did find a problem with slope restrictions too that I need to examine; even with a compute normal or compute terrain (either small patch or large) at the end of the line, the instances still populate on steep areas.

[mhaze]

Wow, just WOW!!!!

[masonspappy]

Beautiful work!   What's that dark patch in the center of the picture?

[Dune]

There are some glitches that I have to remedy; areas where the folding overlaps or turns inside out, turning black. I tried to overcome that by converting all displacements to greys first and then displacing in one go, but apparently not totally.

[Hannes]

The rockface is unbelievably good!!!
Yes, these "displacement folds" are really annoying! I wish, there was a way to automatically clamp the displacement (only where these folds occur).

Somehow I prefer the lighting of the previous images. These dark clouds in contrast to the sunlit area looked so dramatic!!

[aknight0]

Excellent!  Love the coloring!  Is the light a 'cloud hole' spotlight, or another light source?