Rain Is Coming

[dandelO]

I agree, keep the tree, it's a great focus for the middle distance. I'd also like it a bit to the right though, something about the way the branches seem swept, from right to left says it should be more right-sided.

Lovely clouds!

[Gannaingh]

Thank you everybody! I have done some crop renders and having the tree on the right has grown on me.

@njeneb: That would be really cool if I could get the shimmering haze sort of thing to work, I'll have to play with the program a bit to see if I can get some acceptable results.

[Henry Blewer]

I think that a painted shader with a power fractal mask would be a start. A reflective surface would 'bounce' the sky. Getting the distortion above the area will be the most difficult thing.

[Cemoa]

Truly a great man! I agree with Oshyan, when I took a look at this render for the first time I was floored. You managed to evoke such a strong sense of emotion in such a simple render. Very artistic while still being so very realistic. I absolutely love it!

[Cadmium77]

Sometimes you look at a piece of CG and your heart sinks at how crappy it looks...it's total fail. And then you see a picture like this where the CG artist just gets the textures to pop out at you in a powerful but subtle light and all the details are correct or very close to correct and it inspires you to get back to work so you can get to the same place where he's at. Congratulations. Love those clouds.

[ThinkPink]

Oh ... no! Don't remove the tree! the only thing (for me) was the position   

[Gannaingh]

Thanks for the complements everybody  This whole mirage/distortion thing is really tricky and I may have to end up post-working it in, however I'll keep trying to get it to work in tg2

[Dune]

Hey DV; if you take a plane (kind of elongated in front of the tree over the whole length), make it fake semitransparent by a default shader + a playable power fractal with small values, then apply a reflective shader to it, perhaps you could get some sort of shimmering..... the reflection would only be at the 'white areas', the 'black areas' you would see through. Just a theory.....

---Dune 

[Henry Blewer]

It's a good theory. Maybe a cloud over the plane for the shimmer?

[Gannaingh]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have been working with a cloud layer over a reflective shader, the problem is many, many small adjustments that must be made to get it to look right. It hopefully will work, it's just going to take some for me to play around and get the settings right.

[Zylot]

the reflective shader would need heavy specular highlights but very little actual reflectivity.

[Dune]

But then you might just as well take a cloud with small particles. I thought it was about a shimmering reflection on a hot air layer... a population of 'millions' of small reflective planes might do the trick as well, in a band before the tree, just above the ground.

---Dune