This is a gorgeous render overall. I love the subtlety, the realism of the lighting and colors (overall). I think the reeds seem a bit too light and lacking in shadows among them (maybe increase GISD Occlusion Weight, or reduce lightness of the textures with the multiplier). Other than that it's near photoreal to my eye. I continue to really love the Speedtree vegetation.
I think AA18 is overkill here, unless it was highly adaptive. The "high detail" posts that Matt made were suggested as an alternative to the "render double size and downsample" approach, and indeed I have verified that e.g. Detail 2, aa 8 is faster than detail 1 and aa4 at twice the resolution, with equivalent quality. Still in general Detail 0.8 is as high as should generally be necessary. In a case like this with the water in the foreground, Detail 1 may be helpful. Not to say that you will not notice a difference with Detail >1, but I would question the time/benefit ratio. Basically I would only ever use super high detail if I saw a render issue that I hoped to eliminate (such as noisy surfaces).
Anyway, very nice work.
- Oshyan
