I used a very high population density for the grasses here. I wanted the grass to look very lush.
Walli's dry grass pack
Walli's grasses from the Walli's Plant pack
Walli's der Noble One
4 of Wallis SI3D Pine Tree Bundle pines
http://www.flickr.com/photos/njeneb/6666965967/
lousy title maybe, but a great render it is.
good use of grass and trees.
Looks very good Henry! Maybe a little more color diversity in the grass, some patches lightened up, yellowed (population variation, you know...), maybe some flowers, but not too many, and then a big one.
To get the grass to look this lush, I had to space the grass objects 0.3 x 0.3 apart. This made for a long population calculation time, and the render took 22 hours. I really cranked up the settings to see how long the thing would take. It also took 8.5 GB to render. (I am glad I went with 16 GB on this machine. 32 GB would have been better, but the memory sticks were on a long back-order list when I finished up getting this I7 to run.)
I am working on cloud animation now. Should have something to post Wednesday night, perhaps... It would be too good. It's just an experiment, but I'll be doing a full anim of it sometime soon.
Sweet image Henry, one of your better ones!
Soft shadows make this image work.
I also like the different colours in the trees and vegetation, although I agree with Ulco about some variation in the grasses.
The different shades of grasses and plants in the foreground shadow are quite realistic, often this is quite hard to get really right/working.
Next time you may consider increasing the GI strength on surface by 0.5 or 1 to get more detail in the shadows and more sense of indirect lighting.
I wonder why this rendered in 22 hours?
Judging the quality of the render and it's resolution I'd estimate a <5 hours rendertime.
Cheers,
Martin
Yes, 22 hours is an extremely long time. There's no water or difficult reflections... and the image isn't that large. I wonder too, taking into account that you work on an i7. Maybe the settings were to high for what's needed?
I rendered at detail 1, GI 2,4,6. The AA was upped to 24. Here's why it took so long, I forgot to change the First sampling level from 1/4 to 1/16. ???
The results apparent while rendering were worth not stopping the render. I'm still used to Pentium 4 render times. It did not seem all that long from that perspective.
Ghehe ok, if you compare it to P4 times then it doesn't matter :)
Perhaps stick to the more common rendersettings next time when you're rendering a still, like AA6(full) or AA8.
Render detail 1 is never necessary, 0.85 is the max I use.
Nice image Henry :)
Some said grass color etc. but i had just a little problem with the tree textures. Not sure what others think but i googled some images like these:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_SMGcEtInPiY/S98jvGS-qpI/AAAAAAAAAmY/CIzY6Bx8Nrk/s1600/lennox+wood+short+leaf+pine.jpg
http://www.public-domain-image.com/public-domain-images-pictures-free-stock-photos/flora-plants-public-domain-images-pictures/trees-public-domain-images-pictures/conifer-spruce-trees-pictures/pine-tree.jpg
If these are the same kind of trees i would break the texture just a little more with one more displacement-bump layer and it would probably suffice.