Pleiades Version 2.0

[RichTwo]

All rendered in one take - the only postwork was to adjust contrast and sharpen the area of the star cluster.  I cannot seem to get a very clear image from the image map shader plugged into the background, even though the image I use is razor sharp.  Any help, I'll surely appreciate.

[freelancah]

Looking good! Nice job!

[inkydigit]

loving the lighting rich...looking real good!

[dandelO]

That is pretty out-there, man!
The atmosphere will be what is deadening the sharpness of the BG image, I'd bet. You are looking through volumetric haze and blue-sky, that will result in a visual blurring of anything behind it.

[domdib]

Love the smaller moon behind the big planet. And a good use of the mojoliths.

[Hetzen]

Lava lamp world. Like it.

If it was me putting this together, I'd be tempted to do this in several passes. I wouldn't try and get a background plate to work in TG's atmospherics (for the simple reason that you have more control outside, and simple grads in photoshop on backgrounds can comp in quite easily). Instead I'd be looking at exporting several layers of the composition in full colour, then exporting matts of what I want to isolate and colour control.

[RichTwo]

You are looking through volumetric haze and blue-sky, that will result in a visual blurring of anything behind it.

As he slaps his forehead resoundingly... Yeah, I might have guessed that.  I really wanted a low haze for effect.  OK - back to the rendering board!  Thanks, dandelO!

& @ Hetzen - I can do that, but I was testing TG2's abilities.  Maybe the background shader won't be the best go for what I want to achieve.  But thanks!

[Volker Harun]

I wanted to write something constructive yesterday, but was not able to get it right ... second go:

I really like the composition, the foreground and the mojoliths are well done ... but not as much worth as the whole of the composition ... they frame the background which draws my attention. And you are quite right about the background's appearance ... the planets and the star field do not really match. I doubt that using no interpolation for the background, as suggested in another thread, would really improve your art. It may be your aim ... ... ... but not the goal.

What happens to my eyes is, that they are drawn to the moons (moon and planet) and are moving straight downwards out of the image. Having the sharped image as a background might draw my eyes back but ... ... I bet they'll move that much upwards that they leave the image again.

Considering a crisp sharp background, you might want to move the secondary planets just a bit out of the vertical center ...
Using the small moon as a starting point, that the focus is moved by a full diameter of the small moon to the right (maybe left) and half of its diameter upwards. ... just a suggestion to an image that I would like to have rendered myself and would like to improve it ,-)

btw ... good work