5000 years ago

[TheBadger]

Dunes with the grass in the foreground; The bottom right conner is really nice! The light there is very good for some reason. It looks kinda ethereal to me.

[Dune]

Thanks Richard and Badger (I like mystery). I'll try as you suggested, Richard. I mostly shift lakes or planes around, but this time it was 'out of the box'.

I had some trouble again yesterday, when a few hours render (I wondered why it went so slow on an i7) turned out completely black. It started rendering terrain (I could see), but then replace the image by black. Very strange. But I found it; some nodes I had inadvertently linked wrongly (a blender PF string also in the main input of the wave PF). And then it went fast; detail 0.7 AA 8, fills instead of GI, 25 minutes. Still not satisfied, a lot to do, but I'm getting there. I want deeper shadows under the beached boat, for instance, so I started by giving the fills shadows for the next iteration. And the warp in the side streams is too fine (color roughness too high in the warper PF feeding into the vector displacement). 

[Dune]

I warped the simple shapes a bit more, but had wrong values for width and softness width in the first iteration, hence the ridges.
I realize I may have done this with a normal PF, but by using warped simple shapes I have more control, and can deepen outflows if I wish. Second iteration: only part, I still have to add the top to it, but I had the fill light cast shadows from surfaces as well as atmosphere, hence the very dark foreground shadows.
Trouble is, I want no waves in shallow water, especially not elongated ones, so I will try another setup...

[Dune]

Iteration 2

[Tangled-Universe]

Good to know about the lake/water object at X=0 can cause line artefacts, didn't know that. Thanks Richard.

I think this is coming along very nicely. I also see you've addressed the transition of sandy dunes to grassy lands, that was first a bit harsh and now a lot smoother.
The foreground dunes look great and I like the contrast in here.

I suppose you did rotate the watershader here?

[Dune]

Thanks. Yes, but rotated it one way for the mask, then rotated it back later (after warping) for the displacement. I have to check what I exactly did... I also added extra waves in the 'streams' coming into the sea, but that's VERY subtle.

[TheBadger]

This last one looks very sharp and crisp! Like it. The boats really help with scale. Looks very cinematic.

[Dune]

It's getting better, although I still have to get rid of the surf on the leeward sides. But that's being addressed as we speak...

[Dune]

I'm preparing the file for a large render (6000px wide @ detail 0.7 and AA8, GI  2/2/8), but got some trouble. Some parts, where the water is very shallow or very close to the terrain surface (I think), are not rendered properly. I'll check it out with fills instead of GI, which I used before.....