Many thanks to jcinbama for the pine tree model.
This one took about 15 hours to render using 2 cores, quality 0.8, AA14. Cloud samples 128, atmosphere 64. Softshadows set to defaults.
Postwork: minor color/contrast correction and selective sharpening in photoshop
This was mainly a test. I can see putting a castle model somewhere down in that valley. 8)
The clouds were "stopped" from flowing into the valley via a custom image map.
The foliage colors came out looking quite strange and I am not sure why at the moment. Still looking into why, but they will do for now.
There was a small lake in the valley, but I removed this to avoid a crash.
The terrain is just a standard power fractal with an additional power fractal added in with negative displacement to sheer out some roughness into the rock.
Many thanks for viewing.
This is remarkably realistic. Those clouds are stunning!
Edit: The only thing I think could really use some work is the realism of the mountain texturing.
- Oshyan
:o :o :o Truly realistic. Very very well done! :o :o :o
good job man!
Agree with Oshyan, looking great especially the clouds.
Very nice, especially how you've defined the cloud coverage.
Is the cloud map a Y or camera projection?
Great clouds! Although I agree with Oshyan that the mountain texture could use some work.
Wow. Very nice.
Many thanks all for the compliments. 8)
Amazingly, I just threw this one together, mainly to see what I could do "quickly" with stock terrains - which is why the mountain surfaces lack detail. Then I saw some potential, but kept the "get this one together as fast as possible" idea, as I think this can build skill in a lot of cases. The clouds and moon are simple clip files I had pre made, so they were added very quickly.
@JimB: The clouds are mapped using the plan Y method. In order to create the custom mask, I took a quick "snapshot" of the scene with the camera directly above the peak, making sure the top of the image was north, the bottom south, the left west, and the east right. It didn't require high detail, I just needed to know where the peak was in the image. I then took this image into photoshop, added a new layer and literally "painted" a black and white image mask where I wanted the clouds to be. Honestly, it only took about 10 minutes to do the entire thing. Then I brought this mask back into TG2 and used it as a blend shader for the cloud fractals. I've had success with this method in the past, and it worked well again this time. Building this procedurally would have been extremely difficult if not impossible, and would have taken ages.
I'm not sure if I'll re-do this image again, but if I do, I'll definitely add more detail to the surfaces, and retweak the foliage a bit.
The clouds are top notch, really realistic image.
Nice use of light. The clouds look very good, thanks for the explanation of the process.