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Constructive criticism is always welcome:) Created for the "Sunrise" competition on Deviantart
Looks really good, I like the light in the haze. Still 2 things I'd like to mention. The mountain on the left seems to be cut in 2 by the low cloud stripe. I would probably lower that mountain. And the trees don't extend far enough into the distance. As they are rather dark there's a clear distinction between wooded areas and the bare distant hills. Perhaps a procedural fake tree wood (or real trees but further) would be nicer.
I'm fixing some settings now :) But it takes so long to render :P Do you have any hints to cut down render time ? :)
The water area can be masked to reduce render time. This is so time isn't wasted calculating water that is going to end up hidden by land.
You may be able to very much reduce the transparency setting of the water since it is mostly distant reflecting water.
You can read about the masking and find example file here ---- > http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,8793.msg94182.html#msg94182 (http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,8793.msg94182.html#msg94182)
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Well I managed to get the rendering time down from 9 hours down to just 1 hour. The trees in the background needs a bit more work though:) Thoughts ? :)
I like it, but one thing the first image did better is give a sense of depth with the scattered trees. You could do a painted shader mask in certain low-lying areas strategically to get that effect.
It's much better indeed, but needs some light on the front trees. Maybe a fill or a second sun, a bit higher, not glowing in atmo and not lighting atmo...
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I took the fog back and followed Dune's hint on a second sun to give it more light, and I did some more scattering on the trees
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Added some smale rocks using fake stone shader and tweaked the lake
I think the dull (basic?) gray of the underlying terrain needs some more color (browns, greys, greens).
Iknow but i always have trouble making it look good :(
One way for subtle colors; just stack a few surface layers, give each a nice earthy color, mask them each by a power fractal, and set their coverage to 50% or thereabouts. That will mingle into a nice blend of clors of your choosing. For even more variation add another PF to the color input so each basic color will have a 'lightness' range between the colors of the PF (white--black, or lightgray--darkgrey). Many possibilities, you can even distribute certain colors by slope, or height. You can add this stack of colors as a child of a main surface layer in the line to planet.
what beautiful colors !