Pellanor Vale

[cyphyr]

I've not posted in a while, a lot of my work nowadays is covered by NDA's so never gets to see the light of day.  This is a personal peice using a lot of image maps for texture and displacement.
The name is blatantly ripped from Tolkien but that is as far as the reference goes:)
The castle models are by Luca Rodolfi. Check out his site here:
http://rodluc2001.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/welcome-again.html

[TheBadger]

Pretty sweet, Richard.
Would not mind seeing a render of the mountains from down in the town too.

[zaxxon]

A sense of grandeur and scale with a lovely romanticism. Beautiful!

[Dune]

Hey Richard, good to see some new work by you. You always have this wonderful light, and again this time. I love it, really do!
But there are some things that are a pity, IM(very)HO; the shine of the rocks and grass makes it a bit too much CGI. I suppose it's wet rock and grass, but it looks like too much. Also, the clouds are a bit rough; very much small displacements make them 'restless'. And I think the village should have a dirtier color, they 'jump out' too much.
But I did copy it to my favorites folder, as reference for my future work. Love the light!

[cyphyr]

Hehe, yes you're right about the clouds and thank you. I'm re-doing the scene now with better clouds and different models, I'll post an update tomorrow probably ...

[mhaze]

Agree with Dune. Also there are no streets roads or paths in the town. Shouldn't there be some signs of cultivation?

[Upon Infinity]

Great image! You should do a tutorial on how to use image maps in such a way.

[kaedorg]

Very nice. I like the lights.
For such a town, it would need a river or a lake not so far.
They usually built cities near water.

David

[Dune]

Yes, and while you're at it; castles were mostly not built under high rocks where the enemy could comfortably sit and throw stones, whatnot and fire into the castle. Maybe build a small SSS hill away from rocks for the castle to sit on?

[kaedorg]

In south of France, they are building a castle with middle-aged tools

http://www.guedelon.fr/en/the-guedelon-adventure/an-introduction_01_01.html

Could give you ideas

[Dune]

I've been there, taken hundreds of photo's. It's amazing!

[choronr]

A captivating piece of work Richard. 

[cyphyr]

Version 2

Yes I agree about the town and castle, they have been removed!
I think the hardest part of any procedural software is to integrate man made elements in to a random environment.
The small castle is also by Luco (http://rodluc2001.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/welcome-again.html). Trees from Xfrog of course.

I used the surface depth mask not for lens blur (as is usual) but for slight desaturation of the distant hills. Also curves have been applies to both surface and cloud to remove a little red.

[mhaze]

Great atmoshere, a significant improvement.

[Dune]

Indeed. Great render!