I haven't posted any new images in a while so I figured I'd post this one. I am trying to use TG2 to get that "matte painting" look. Still more work to do, but its slowly getting there.
I LOVE THIS NEW UPDATE!
Anyway, this one took 3+ hours at quality 0.8. I forgot I had turned off soft shadows (which would have added more realism and rendering time), but I am satisfied for now and moving on.
The castle in the distance is a 3D model I created in google sketchup a while back. There were a few low level artifacts on it, so I had to fix them using Photoshop (just minor stuff that most wouldn't have noticed, but it would have gotten on my nerves if I didn't fix them!)
The overall terrain is just a standard power fractal.
The foreground rocks were created from some rock displacement techniques I've been dialing in over the past few months, paired with a distance stack using image map shaders for color variation. I've found its better to separate the displacements from colors, except on super tiny scales. As for using image maps shaders, I find they give more realistic variation in color (obviously), lessen the render time. However, using them for displacement doesn't usually work well. They also require a distance stack to keep the tiling effect to a minimum.
The clouds are standard power fractals.
The water is a standard water plane. I attempted to get rid of the "shine" via roughing it up, but it ended up making it look oily/glassy with strange large swells. Ohh well, better luck next time.
For postwork: minor color/contrast/lighting corrections, selective sharpening.
Many thanks for viewing.
