Cheers Badger,
I am doing multiple passes, I think it's more a case of the way I'm used to shading and lighting in other render engines versus how terragen works with imported objects.
I work a lot with Arnold and Vray and they have far more advanced shading systems than terragen currently. This is by no means a criticism of terragen as it does a great job, and it's primary goal (I believe) is realistic terrain and atmospherics which are head and shoulders above the competition in my opinion.
But as is the case with any render engine, it takes time to learn how to get the best results, or should I say, the results you are looking for, and that's what I'm exploring in these series of tests, just trying to get as close as I can to other renderers with imported objects.
I think, for me, some of the things I miss are, indirect specular contributions, and the render time hit in ray-tracing true reflections on the leaves and fauna, none of which are particularly an issue on scenes of a large scale, but when hero elements are in shot, it's very tough to match the same level of shading and light interaction.
Still, I know some of you guys are achieving great results, so I'm sure there's more for me to get out of this yet.
Been freelancing this week, so not had any more time for testing, but hope to get back to it after this job's done in a few weeks.
Chris