Take Flight

[darthvader]

I really like the birds in this one.

The grass consists or four of Lightning's lush grass models with unique textures and the trees are also his Olea Europaea trees (models one and two). The birds I picked up a while ago on some freeware sight.

I think it is a bit on the dark side and also believe that the foreground could use something...mabye a nice vibrant flowerbed...any suggestions and comments are much appreciated

[attachthumb=#]

[Mohawk20]

A bit dark, but I like the tree stump, and the birds make it come to life!

[rcallicotte]

I agree with Mohawk and suggest you use some dodging in PS (or similar program) to get that whole look.  The grass in the foreground, when I look at it, should be more visible.  There's a program called PhotoMatix (http://www.hdrsoft.com/), which has been mentioned on this site before.  It would help.  Great scene possibilities.  Cool birds.

[Mr_Lamppost]

Nice One 

I like the dark foreground, the near silhouette of the trees focuses the view on the sky, which is aI assume where you are wanting people to look. 

I would either crop off the bottom or point the camera up a little more.

[lightning]

um it is a little dark great use of my plants!!!!
yeah photomatix is a real good program i used to use it in my terragen classic renders when i outputted them as HDRI

[darthvader]

Lightning, tkany you very much for all your plants, without them tg2 wouldn't be nearly as fun. I found an easy way to make the next one lighter, just rotait the sun a bit so it is shining more on the near side of the plants. I'll upload when it finished.

[darthvader]

Here is the brighter version, I think the foreground is still kinda bland so I might tilt the camera upward some more to get a better focus on the sky.

[attachthumb=#]

[Seth]

nice one

[rcallicotte]

Great scene.  Like the grass and the birds.  Lovely point of view...makes me wish I was there.

[darthvader]

thanks

[Mr_Lamppost]

I usually add a small amount of translucency to Grass.  Have a look at this example:

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=4002.0

To see the sort of values I use.  I often do something similar to leaf materials.

[Phylloxera]

The second image is better !

[monks]

I like this pic- very serene and lush. The second is better imo.

monks

[darthvader]

thanks everybody here is my latest render, I've altered the grass to make it look more...grassy in addition to adding translucency to the grass and leaves and changing the camera orientation. As always constructive critism is always appreciated!

[attachthumb=#]

[Tangled-Universe]

I like this last update a lot. The lighting looks very natural, the models look good and are not overpopulated.
There are just 2 minor crits I have. First I think the shadows are a bit to sharp and too dark. I'd suggest to increase soft shadow diameter a bit and also to add an extra sun opposite to the main sun and at the same angle. Disable all shadows and highlights, just plain light. Set strength to about 0.2-0.4. This fills the shadows a bit. It adds a tiny bit of rendertime, but this always works fine for me. Increasing GI strength on surfaces to 1.5 or 2 might also help in certain situations.
Secondly, and the easiest but most time consuming, is that I'd like to see it somewhat bigger and at higher detail settings. But that's just a wish :p
Nice work!

Martin