I'm new here, here's the outcome of my test.
Around a million trees (that barely even show up)(the xfrog birch).
Quality is an amazing 0.75 (I didn't really think it would look so great at that level).
On a quad core with an EVGA video card.
(http://s603.photobucket.com/albums/tt112/TheAmazingJimmy/?action-view¤t=test.jpg)
In case the image does'nt show up, here's the direct link:
http://s603.photobucket.com/albums/tt112/TheAmazingJimmy/?action=view¤t=test.jpg
Also, the original image is 1280 across, but I can't find an image hosting website that will host the full size.
Anyone know how I can get my trees to show up a little better?
I'd like them to at least show up as green bumps or something.
Nice image :). Currently your trees are cloaked in shadow and they're also very far away from the camera. Increasing cloud and atmosphere samples might help clear them up, and getting rid of the lower clouds altogether would probably help a little bit. You could also try increasing the size of the trees (although that might mess up your sense of scale) and you could also go into the internal network of the tree objects to increase the saturation of the green leaves to help bring that up a bit more.
Also, make sure you use 'highest quality' in the population tab, that way you'r trees wont appear too scraggy.(not that they look scraggy in your image, I just mean in general). :)
Using high quality will make this image render for years. I'd suppose the following:
Create population A with medium detail settings and with specular reflections tinted green.
Size variations for example 5/8; distribution based by your settings and blended with highly contrasted perlin shader.
Create population B with medium detail settings and with specular reflections tinted yellow.
Size variations for example 8/11; distribution based by your settings and blended with the above shader but with inverted colour.
This way you'll have approximately the same number of trees but each population will be toned different and with different size variations.
But still on such quality settings, resolution and POV - don't expect to see much detail overall. It probably would be better to experiment with fake trees - displacements. I've tried something like it with some effect - http://porcupinefloyd.deviantart.com/art/Procedurals-Against-Limits-106697081.
Nice alpine and cloudscapes!
I agree with O_b about the low clouds, though I would not remove them. I'd make them less dense and indeed increase the rendersettings.
Increasing saturation is a good idea. A simple way to do that sometimes (but it doesn't always work nicely) is to just increase the translucency or increase the diffuse color of the texture. It's normally set at 0.5 when a texture is loaded, but if you increase the value you'll see that it will brighten.
I certainly would set the renderdetail at highest for the population. It indeed adds rendertime, but not that much like Porcupine suggests. At least, I think.
If I'm wrong then a good approach would be to split the population in two:
1 = trees nearby (highest quality)
2 = trees background (high or medium quality)
At great distance the benefits of using highest quality settings are almost lost, so using a lower quality population will look the same, render faster and uses less RAM.
I used to set all my population on highest detail available but it made render times skyrocket so now I'm not going above medium settings and overall detail above 0.85.
Splitting the populations could do the trick if you really wish to set detail to highest possible and maintain reasonable render time.