Castle Rock

[cyphyr]

Well here it is, just shy of 20 hours render time.
1600 x 800
Detail 0.75
AA 7
GI 1/1, 8
C & C very welcome:)
Richard

[Esgalachoir]

Awesome!

[chefc]

Excellent work Richard well worth the time

[inkydigit]

agree with the chef!...excellent work here!

[j meyer]

Nice one.

[rcallicotte]

Nice work.  Kudos to the lucky ones on that boat!

[sjefen]

Wow.... this is really nice. I love the color's. Beautiful scene.
My only problem is the texture on the buildings. It looks like they are made of sand.

- Terje

[buzzzzz1]

Very nice image. 

[efflux]

Cool. Lots going on here. I bet this took ages. Some more texture on the buildings would be good.

[cyphyr]

Thankx for the feedback guys:)
I'm rendering yet another version now with better, more dramatic lighting. I do aggree about the sandy look of the castle texture. Its just a very simple uv mapped stone wall texture (insanely scaled up (or down ( depending on how you look at it )), whice is actually far too small to seen as its true texture. I may make a more custom set of uv maps eventually if I can be bothered. My main issue is still the trees, when they are illuminated obliquely to the camera they look fine (see left of image), but illuminated parrellel to the camera they look flat (see right of image), and they also look flat if they are already in another shadow.
Thanks again
Richard

[cyphyr]

Well this really is the final version. The buildings are rendered in Lightwave and Terragen! Camera/Lighting matching was very much easier than I had assumed. I rendered them in pure white in terragen to make a mask (Photoshop Darken) and overlayed the Lightwave radiosity/area light render. This was much higher detail than the TG render (same size and render levels where poss) And when overlayed at 50% opacity kept the colour info of TG but added much greater shadow detail. As for the trees I duplicated the trees layer, ran a sharpen filter on the dup layer and set blend to 50%, worked a treat I think.
Its a shame the upload limit forces a compression as a lot of detail is lost.
I'm done with this image now, a month is long enough for one image! I may render it off at print res while I'm away at weekends, it would be nice to see it on my wall
C&C as always appreciated
Richard

[domdib]

I hesitate to comment, as this is far beyond my meagre skills. I think both are very impressive, with a slight preference for the first one, but the one issue I have is with the water surface, which somehow seems too "busy" and harshly reflective - almost like a finely hammered metal. I also wonder whether the scale of the boat is quite right - its sails seem to reach up several stories in one of the onshore towers. Having said that, very accomplished.

[PG]

One of the most realistic I've seen. I kinda like the water myself but it could look good as a calmer lake. I reckon this should go in the gallery