Early dawn on the Pyramid !

[pclavett]

Good day all ! I seem to binge work on Terragen and hope to settle for some more regular work in the coming months ! Playing with GAEA for the last few months and produced this one to import into Terragen. Used a lot of the texturing in GAEA to make the base colours for the terrain and distribution maps for the rivers, river-shores and vegetation to follow the likely water areas ! The clouds are from a NWDA preset that was purchased years back and was tweaked to fit this project. Will continue to work the plains surface on this one and probably render some other view and closeups ! Have a great day all and take care ! Paul

[pixelpusher636]

WOW!! Truly a spectacular view pclavett. Those clouds!! I also love the perspective, vegetation and the snow dusting the mountain. Great work man you nailed it. 

[Dune]

Very spectacular! The mix of clouds is wonderful.

[Stormlord]

Amazing Clouds and a spectatcular Landscape.
A very good start to go with it...

STORMLORD

[Hannes]

Wow, indeed spectacular!!! I love the terrain, and the clouds are the icing on the cake.

[KlausK]

This is absolutely gorgeous. Wow.

CHeers, Klaus

[RogueNZ]

Incredible work!

[masonspappy]

That cloud formation is incredible!

[pclavett]

Thanks guys for the generous comments ! They are appreciated ! I have done another render of this same project with change of the camera to better see the rivers and some adjustment in the light.....earlier dawn with sun lower and some change in the atmospherics ! I learned on this one that you can actually use water without a lake, that is hook a water shader to a surface layer that was mask with a river mask generated in GAEA. Think it would not render OK on closeup but from a distance, it seems to give adequate results as on this image. The settings for the water shader have to be tweaked and it does not behave the same way as when delivered on a Lake node ! I have also changed the fields shaders after noticing some problems in the higher resolution image. The fields are totally procedural except for the few Dune bushes that follow the erosion lines. BTW..... the Dune bushes are my use-all bushes on most of my projects. They are perfect ! Again thanks for your comments and have a great weekend ! Paul

[Jo Kariboo]

Wow !

[mhaze]

terrific !

[Hannes]

Wow, amazing!!! Maybe a little too crisp, but quite an improvement.

[Dune]

This light is wonderful. I like the river too. It would be good if you could eliminate that one cloud on the right, which looks like it's cut off at the top. You could try by masking it out by a simple shape in that location, you'd have to manouver a bit to find the exact spot.
And the trees bug me, the firs almost look like shadows from the other trees. I think you should use only (more species of) deciduous trees, no pines, firs or so. If you do, locate them at higher altitudes.

[pclavett]

Thanks for he comments Ulco ! That cloud bugged me too and debated whether to Photoshop it out ! I could try to mask it out but wonder how much of work that would entail ! As for the tree...... you are right again and figure that I should have used some birches or aspens for this type of landscape.... high altitude meadows. I will work on this and try to come up with an even better image ! As for Hannes comment on crispness...... did go overboard on the Unsharpen Mask in Photoshop ! Sorry about that ! Appreciate the comments ! Thank you so much !

[pclavett]

I was looking at a few posts and saw a suggestion from Hannes to another artist that he should PATH TRACE his render when there are lots of veggies ! I should come more regularly to get these kind of hints ! I had never pushed that button in the Render node..... and always was dissatisfied with the look of the vegetation at low light..... ie sunset or dawn ! I went back to my project and did a few trials..... what a difference !!! I fixed the trees, put in a few more varieties, did some tinting on them, rearanged the atmospherics after seeing a nice pink dawn a few days back and here is the result. I included the other one (for comparison) with the less than pretty trees done with the default renderer, and note as well the corrected clouds in the RT render. I sincerely thank you for your suggestions and help ! Appreciated ! Have a great week all ! Paul