Hi again Mohawk
To answer your questions (and perhaps some of my own) concerning both my TG skills and postwork skills. As one can easily see my postwork skills pretty well speak for themselves, but in the TG2 portion of this work it is almost at least as convoluted if not more so than the polishing up work in PS. First the initial pic that I originally posted gives you some idea of how this image began befor I turned toward a different themed and much more detailed picture that would include some simulated quality of caustics with an increase in faked rocks/procedural grass and more transparency to the river. The first thing I attempted (as my posted questions showed) was the use of clip files to create procedural grass and river rock structures integrated together, and I will show you the jpg that began this evolving river bottom and the grass structure under the teepees and buffalo. Lightning's grass clumps also are a part of this mix, and I will include these as a mid stage example of the several series of TG2 renders for your examination. There are a vast number of postwork steps intermixed in every step of stitching together these foundation TG2 renders and just too many permutaions/postwork to ever illustrate on this or any other thread.
I have had two priorities in creating this particular landscape and associated graphic images, and that was to use TG2 and the original old Terragen DEM to make a credible Native American related image by whatever worked. It took a little of everything from a large consortium of graphic/functional resouces and my own devious bag of tricks to get everthing to this point. One can only hope that the end justifies my making up for a lack of more complete TG2 skills with any temporary graphics crutch that could help to improve my understanding of this wonderful program. I personally think that at this point I now have many more TG2 skills than when I began this project, and maybe my next work can include a base of the full version of TG2 and bring all those tools and assets to my assistance.
The bottom line is that I wanted at least a near commercial level image using the free version from planetside, the viewer must judge (perhaps by the "puddin") if I achieved this or if I am merely a wannabee TG2 artist who must always rely on BS "fudge factors" for creating decorative wallpaper. I cannot in all truth see this image being completed to this present state without my having used TG2. Thanks for your interest and input and thanks to Calico for the kind comment.
