I really love the sky on this one. Nice clouds and lighting.
And yes, the image is a bit dark. On the other hand it is maybe a strong point because the majority images are very well lit, sometimes even overlit.
If I look at the sky, background terrain (nice displacements!) and the foreground with vegetation and fake stones I'd say it's quite photorealistic but to me the water makes the image look too CG.
Perhaps less noizy water will improve the photorealistic look.
In overall very good work!
Martin
Quote from: calico on May 20, 2008, 12:33:49 PM
Pretty good, Martchi. A little dark, but then it would be. The challenge becomes then (if you want it), how to fake the eye into thinking that the pupil can change to see what is in the dark. The only thing yet that I think TG2 has that would work for this, besides Soft Lighting, would be the ambient occlusion setting and I haven't given it much thought. This is untested and undiscovered territory. It also means finding that balance between dark and light so the eye is tricked into thinking that when it looks at the image, the eye is looking into the image.
I'm still trying to figure out cool displacement, so don't mind my ranting about. 
Cool work, Martchi.
You can use ambient occlusion and GI together, but it needs careful tweaking/settings. I've tried it on some of my older render, I'll see if I can find some.
