Canyon Moon

[PCook]

I offer this image for community critique. I made an effort to employ composition techniques one would use in photography, such as including a foreground as a visual base. My goal was to test Terragen, and myself, to achive a realistic scene but with just a touch of fantasy. I was most interested in Terragen's water and cloud realism - I am not dissapointed. The starfield is a bit much, but that's me going over the top with the stars image map made in photoshop (can we get a starfield shader one day?). This image was rendered at 1800x1200 ppi and resized in Photoshop to 6x4 inches at 300dpi. Comments are welcome as to how I could improve my Terragen work. Thanks.
-Pat

[Mahnmut]

Hi, good start!
I especially like the foreground and clouds, the composition with foreground, middle- and background is also good.
You asked for comments, so here is my humble opinion:
Your water could need some improvement in my opinion, try changing the wave size, transparency or reflectivity, wind patches could also add to the dynamic and realism of the surface.
If you used a strata shader for your canyon walls you could try to tilt the strata a bit. Maybe change the suns direction for some more dramatic light and shadows.

You can have a starfield shader even today, I built an early prototype long ago, you can see the result in my recent image "ringed".
But there are much better starfields by now, for example dandelOs:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=8995.msg96122#msg96122
Or a bit more sci-fi from pachalmars:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=2017.0
The great thing about TG is, its team-art, you can use other peoples ideas without stealing them and still make a whole new image of your own.
Have fun!
best regards,
Jan

[PCook]

Good advice Jan. Thank you for the starfield tip. I tried it and like it.

Your water could need some improvement in my opinion, try changing the wave size, transparency or reflectivity, wind patches could also add to the dynamic and realism of the surface.

I made an effort to not go overboard with the water in terms of motion. Assuming that a canyon would be hot with calm or no wind, I didn't want the water to move much at all. I also didn't want to detract from the mountain reflections in the water.

If you used a strata shader for your canyon walls you could try to tilt the strata a bit.

Good suggestion. I will try applying more, although it is curently at 150.75.

Maybe change the suns direction for some more dramatic light and shadows.

I wanted to get the sun heading to a point where the reflections worked and the mountain range was just accented enough to not detract from the moon (although hard to not miss that moon) and the water. Although the mountains on the right are over exposed. I'll tweak the sun's heading.

The great thing about TG is, its team-art

An excellent point! Last week I downloaded a TGD from the file sharing area and was amazed how many scenes could be made from that one TGD. I'm finding that once you have your terrain built, exploring for scenes is fun.

[TheBadger]

Like the clouds.

[PCook]

Like the clouds

Credit goes to Terragen for the clouds - that's just how they came out. I was lucky.

[RichTwo]

I too am enthralled by the atmo / clouds.  One thing that kind of got my attention in another way was the large moon: (1) no dark side in respect with the sunlight position? and (2) looks somewhat two-D, like a plane object with an image map projected onto it.  TG2's "real" planets look spherical. 

If you haven't already, try out my Planet Creator .tgd in File Sharing here.  It's not perfect, but creates some pretty interesting worlds you can stick in the sky.

[PCook]

Good points Rich2. Actually, I was trying for a full moon. But it does look flat, now that you mention it. I'll check out your planet resource.
Thanks
Pat