Hot and Windy and not on Earth

[moodflow]

This image took nearly 30 hours to render at 2000x1500.  I've had it on the back burner for nearly 2 years, so I figured I'd visit TG2 again and render it.  Its mainly a mix of some techniques I'd been working on a long while back.

The sand surface features crystal sparkles (procedural), and the sand ridges are a combination of procedural methods and a custom image map for the hard, crusty, wind-blown look.

The mounds, clouds, lighting, atmospherics are all procedural.  Soft shadows are on.  AA bloom is on.


Postwork (30 mins or so):
The stars and the sunspot effect (which I wasn't able to pull off properly any other way, though I'm sure it could be done procedurally).

Minor color/contrast and selective sharpening in Photoshop.

This image could have been made much better, but what the heck... time to move on.

Thanks for viewing.

[Oshyan]

Great to see a new image from you! The foreground sand textures and shapes, and the sparkles are outstanding. Great lighting and color too. I think the only thing that doesn't quite work for me is the sun texture. Is that the actual sun with a large radius disc, or is it a sphere or additional planet object with luminosity? If it's one of the latter, you should be able to more realistically do the texturing natively in TG.

Anyway, great image, welcome back.

- Oshyan

[domdib]

Ooo that sky is gorgeous - and the landscape is great too!

[cyphyr]

Great image, no crits
Richard

[mhaze]

fantastic sky - great image.

[Kadri]

Nice and interesting image , Moodflow  
As Oshyan said the foreground realistic sand textures and shapes are outstanding and are affecting the perception of the stylistic background for me ; interesting!

[Henry Blewer]

Bookmarked your site. I want to take a good look at your images. This is really inspiring.

[Zairyn Arsyn]

Excellent render!!! 

the sand textures and displacements look awesome

the sky looks perfect, love it.

[freelancah]

Awesome!

[inkydigit]

epic render....love the sky and sand/rocks!

[Kevin F]

Lovely image. The rock surface is really effective.

[Tangled-Universe]

Great work and even greater to see you back
The sandripples look awesome!
Looking forward to see your next work

Cheers,
Martin

[kasalin]

Fantastic light and mood.... the surface with the sand is outstanding

[matrix2003]

BRAVO !   

[moodflow]

Hey all,

Never really left, still lurked every now and then. 

Anyway, I wanted to thank everyone for the comments.  Good to hear from you all again!   

Jeff