Mudflats

[Dune]

They are called 'kwelders' in Dutch, the fascinating areas that exist where the sea eats the land. This started as a ground test for a commission, but I added some stuff to make it a scene.
The upper quarter veggies where pasted over from a partially done PT render. PT is nicer of course, but took ages on the lower part, so I killed it. Detail 0.5, AA 6.
I just thought it would be nice if you could mesh displace objects by the ground they sit on, so these dead strings of seaweed would bend with the ground. Would be awesome. In priinciple it would be possible I think, needs some testing.
Bike form the web, girl is DAZ with some additional MD clothing, just for the fun of it

[Tangled-Universe]

As a fellow Dutch the render is very recognizable for what it's meant to represent, nice work!
I like the ripples and the transition between them. The white'ish patches visually make sense to me when behind the bicyclist, but on the left part I don't know what they are meant to represent, especially because one patch is on the 'dry' surface. I guess it was meant as foam you sometimes see floating?
Not a huge fan of the noise/interference going on at the very center of the image, but I respect the argument you gave me on Discord with regards to rendering.
Else, I also like the flat seaweeds and I don't know how to describe it in English or even at all, but those stones or clams(?) in the wet area have a nice smooth displacement effect around them which gives a strong sense that there's actually interacting liquid there.
I think that's a really nice touch.

What could be a cool idea is to create an aerial shot out of this, like 30m from the ground and camera pointing down like 45 degrees. Then use a smoothly distorted voronoi to create the patches of dryland and the channels of water and mud between them.
In the style of this: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a1/07/52/a107523220959a48a95a5cfe58c7ee5e.jpg
I think this could look really cool if it's build around an interesting geometric pattern.

[schmeerlap]

Nice mudflats scene. As I said on Discord the bland sky as a backdrop helps to highlight the tall grass on the mound. Good juxtaposition between gently rippling shallow pools with the higher frequency ripples of the wet sand. If I may pick your brains here: what parameters do you use on your Reflective Shader? I have yet to properly master this shader.

[Dune]

Thanks for your somments, guys. The ripples are 2 imagemaps, and I'm still trying to do something procedurally. I agree about the roughish part in the center. I am also not satisfied with the whitish color. It could be watered/smudged bird droppings, but it's not recognizable as 'something'. The only floating foam is in the water. The 'clams' are just fake stones with a hard color variation, but I like the effect too. The wet areas are also a bit bumpy (watered down sand ridges), and for real water remnants they have to go.
The stream is just a simple shape, but something like this will have to be built from a wider area with actual creeks.
For wettish mud I usually use non-RT reflection with a reflectiveness of something like 0.2-0.5 and roughness 0.2, highlight intensity also down to 0.5, but it depends on how wet your mud needs to be. For the watery bits, full reflectivity and roughness 0.01 or so. I didn't use RT, but added some localized (Simple shapes) RT reflective areas where it's really beneficial (for a reflected plant or bird or so). All to keep render times low

[schmeerlap]

Please confirm for my thick head that you refer to Ray traced reflections when using the abbreviation RT, and not Reflection tint. 

[Dune]

Yes, that's what I mean. I hardly ever change the tint. With RT checked you get a real reflective surface (slower to compute), with RT unchecked it's a haze, sort of, but still looks okay for wet mud, because of the highlights and such. Unless you use Path tracing, then it's treated as real reflection, so slower again.

[Dune]

Here's another setup with 2 settings for reflective mud. One at 0.2, the other at 0.5, both non-RT, roughness 0.1 or 0.2, can't remember exactly. The 'water' is just a 100% reflective shader, roughness 0.01, with some additional colors to mimic debris (with a bit of warp by normal: 0.5 or 1, so the darks and light stick to one side, more or less). Water area smoothed (smoothing ripples) and broken up by a PF as well, not only colors, so you get this rough, eroded edge.
And your bike wake

[pclavett]

Love the first one best.... probably because of the mud bumps with gorgeous flowers ! Awesome work Ulco !