Some tranquil test settlement

[Dune]

@Henry: the texturing is really quite simple. Just some extra fractals added. The building is what is important!

[MacGyver]

Excellent job, I like the winter picture a lot, looks very genuine

[Kadri]

I like the last one 

Kadri.

[Dune]

Another one is cooking, where I raised the water level and made it murky. And now a problem arises as you can see. The shadows cast into the murk are grainy. I know it's probably because the level of detail underwater is internally decreased to save rendertime, but it's not nice. How to overcome this? Higher detail, I'll try that. Otherwise I'll have to find another way; perhaps put a thin cloud layer just under water....

[inkydigit]

I like the winter scene too!

[Henry Blewer]

Try using ambient occlusion. It softens up the shadows. It also allows the control over more of the lighting effects.

[FrankB]

not sure this is good advice, Henry. AO is really only helpful to increase the lightness of shadows, but not for adding detail. Also AO has a global effect, not only for under water, so it can spoil the lighting for the rest of your scene. AO needs to be used with caution, and ideally is not necessary at all (rather increase exposure and add GI sample quality).

Cheers,
Frank

[Henry Blewer]

It will help with the rough shadows. The only other way I can think of is to use soft shadows with a detail sample setting of 27. For me 27 seems to work well without increasing render time drastically.

But you are right. If ambient occlusion is not used correctly, it washes everything out, and can cause the image to be colored weirdly.

[Dune]

@ Henry: I'll check your idea out. In the meantime a hazy Spring version has arrived, with the waters still a bit high, and some wind coming up... I wish we could bend the vegetation in strong winds 

---Dune

[Mor]

Very nice one! I like the spring version most of these.

[Henry Blewer]

The spring version seems to have the best lighting. Looks quite good. I would have grouped the cows, they tend to have buddies and only face one direction in strong winds. (They space themselves apart in strong winds; the gas  )

[otakar]

So I open up the Winter scene and I am blown away. Then I see the Spring scene on the next page. That's even better (and sure, very different)! I love 'em both. Would make a great picture series. All four seasons, side by side, framed on the wall. Really, really nice. How Terragen does not get more exposure with output like this is beyond me.

[Dune]

I can't get enough of this scene, and produced another Fall version, with a sort of Rembrandt-like lighting (only a sort of). Right now another one is rendering where the creeks are almost dried up. High summer (or the end of times). I'll make a nice blend-over thing in Flash, and put it up on my site later on. With all earlier version slightly improved.

---Dune

[choronr]

These renderings are really nice. I know what you mean working with a good setup trying different POVs ...keep on!

[MacGyver]

I like the last one a lot, as you said, feels just like a painting.