I've been wanting to throw something like this together for a while. Something simple, effective, fun. Getting kinda burnt out on spending days (or weeks) dialing in an image only to be disappointed (though its part of the learning process).
Resolution: 1024x768
Quality: 1.0
Render time: ~5 hours
Displacements: inverted crater shaders with a few tweaks
Surfacing: standard power fractals for the displacements, image projected "sand" for the flats (I love this technique, though it can't be animated)
Atmosphere/Clouds: standard atmosphere, standard clouds with a few tweaks
Postwork: very subtle color correction, levels, and selective blurring/sharpening
Story: Somewhere on Earth, in the present, distant past, or distant future, there is a large basin with the sand blasted remnants of a once great mountain range... (sounds dramatic enough to me
)
Many thanks for looking...