It took a while for the next level of my Pteranodon scenery.
First I added foamy water.
Thank you Dune for the great idea to add some foamy water (in your example scene, your water is foamy).
Mhaze had once posted an example scene with foamy water, which is really great and the best I've seen so far!
Luckily, I saved his example to my library (even if I didn't understand at that time, how the shader really works?).
So the credits here are going to mhaze for his fantastic foamy water.
Foam example by mhaze
After transferring his example into my landscape, I rendered two close-ups for my next level of development.
For the first viewpoint, I was searching for a classic "look through the trees" spot. I found a good one here...
Pteranodon Landscape 1
Foamy water shot
And to get a better idea of the coastline, I also rendered a perspective of the shore.
To show more clearly the water foam, I imprinted a zoom from the original 4K rendering in the second render.
Pteranodon Landscape 2
Foamy water shot
You may have noticed, that here a snowy mountain pops up. This lead's us to my second improvement, snowy terrain higher up.
The snow here is basically designed upon Dune's snow Shader, which I also found somewhere here in the forum.
The version here is an enhanced version, which produces vector based snow with combined ice as well. So thx Dune for sharing!
Pteranodon Hunter 2023
Preview window
The first Pteranodon Hunter render is a clear shot to show the landscape very clear.
The second is made with clouds. Here I added a very subtle lens flare effect in the misty cloud.
Allow me to point out the shadow from the second bird of prey falling over the dense white cloud.
Pteranodon Hunter 2023
Snowscape version
Pteranodon Hunter 2023
Snowscape version
It's a lot I've done to make this scene a good one.
I have put most of the knowledge I earned over the years into this scene, even If I will not say, that I'm an expert.
But here is what I've done and learned so far.
- Terrain erosion with the classic erosion plugin
- Designing better terrain shaders for convincing renders (ground, snow, ice)
- Developing natural looking vegetation populations
- Manipulate renderings in Photoshop with rendered (plant) masks
- Converting models, manipulate (scaling, transforming) and importing them into TG
- How to create a scene (More informing before start creating a Jurassic scene!)
- Working with Fake stones
- Making cool tropical water
- Pushing the limit by adding foamy water to it
So, at least, I really hope you like it!
Probably this version will be the final one.
STORMLORD