Winter lights.

[typerextreme]

Okay, for anyone who cares how I did this, I turned off the sun and put in 5 colored lights with radius 2 and strength 20000 for each. They were placed along a "river" carved from a heightfield generated by tg2. There is a lake underneath the small cloud layer, this I hoped would help scatter the color. I am having an issue with the bottom of the image where it looks like i carved part of the cloud layer into a rectangle.  If anyone knows how to fix this, please tell me what I need to do.

I attached two copies. The first has raytracing disabled. The second has ray tracing enabled. Render time was 30 minutes for the first and 6 and half hours for the second.  I would like your opinions as to which is better.  For color reference, the lights in order from bottom of image to top are pure blue, pure lime green, pure red, pure purple, pure orange. The "snow" has a luminosity of 0.25 The land is generic tg2 color.

I attached the tgd. It is for the raytraced version but to get the first picture just disable ray tracing in the render tab.

[Dune]

The rectangular forms are reflections of the mountains, IMO. Perhaps decrease reflectivity.... Nice effect, by the way. Very ... eh... Milkyway-like.

---Dune

[Kevin F]

Impossible to say which is best since I've no idea what it should look like!

[typerextreme]

Impossible to say which is best since I've no idea what it should look like!

I should have explained a little more. The image is supposed to look like there is a strand of Christmas lights underneath the water and fog.

The rectangular forms are reflections of the mountains, IMO. Perhaps decrease reflectivity.... Nice effect, by the way. Very ... eh... Milkyway-like.

---Dune

Decrease reflectivity on what? The snow or the cloud layer, or the water? or something else entirely?

[Henry Blewer]

This is a tough set up to critique. I have not tried this with lights, and I can't think of any other images like this I have seen.

It's an interesting process, and with some work the image could be really awesome. I would try the lights above the water surface. Maybe add a surface layer for a reflective shader. The surface layer controls can adjust the amount of reflectivity on the slopes.

[typerextreme]

This is a tough set up to critique. I have not tried this with lights, and I can't think of any other images like this I have seen.

It's an interesting process, and with some work the image could be really awesome. I would try the lights above the water surface. Maybe add a surface layer for a reflective shader. The surface layer controls can adjust the amount of reflectivity on the slopes.

my idea is that i may have the lights shine rays through the clouds onto the mountains at some point.

I'm going to try just turning off the "snow" layer and render what i have then. see if that fixes the rectangle cut out in the clouds.

[Dune]

If you have a lake in the valley, there's a reflectivity of 1 in the water shader (I suppose). Turn that one down (even to 0). Or perhaps replace the watershader+lake by a thin but quite dense and even cloud layer, enough for the light to shine through, but without the reflectivity.

[typerextreme]

If you have a lake in the valley, there's a reflectivity of 1 in the water shader (I suppose). Turn that one down (even to 0). Or perhaps replace the watershader+lake by a thin but quite dense and even cloud layer, enough for the light to shine through, but without the reflectivity.

I'll try turning down the reflectivity first. Then if that doesn't work i'll remove the lake.

[typerextreme]

Turning the master reflectivity in the water shader to 0 fixed the rectangle cutout in the clouds yay! this is what it turned out like.

I'm trying to figure out what the random jagged line is in the bottom center of the image though. It showed up in varying degrees in the other renders I did. I figure it must be some glitch in the clouds, because no matter how high the depth was or how low it was, the line never disappeared.

[typerextreme]

Now that the clouds have been mostly fixed, i'm going to try messing with the snow on the mountains to find what i like the best, and then add more lights further down the river.

[TheBlackHole]

That "random jagged line" is caused by the clouds starting to hide your terrain. Might want to decrease cloud hardness.

[TheBlackHole]

Unless what you're talking about is those black streaks... Get rid of those in Photoshop.

[typerextreme]

these are what i'm talking about, but i believe i may have inadvertently cleared them up in my current render (in progress as i post) when i had to increase coverage adjust to fit my needs. It should be done rendering in about 30 minutes, give or take 10 minutes lol.

[TheBlackHole]

Well, if they're still there, one word...
Photoshop!

[typerextreme]

Well, if they're still there, one word...
Photoshop!

lol true. although i use paint.net or gimp. i can't afford photoshop 

the latest render will be uploaded in about 20 minutes.