On 13-3-2017 11:12, Mr wrote:
> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
>> A scene I have been working on for some time, with different
>> interruptions. This is a first final version; possibly, some changes
>> will take place.
>>
>> The background star field and the landscape are based on Apophysis
>> images http://apophysis.org/, the first as an .exr file, the second as
>> basis for the height_field. The scene is a subtle play with different
>> light_groups.
>>
>> The vegetation was modelled with Dryad, a little free application from
>> stanford.edu
>> http://news.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/dryad-010908.html that seems
>> to have disappeared from the net.
>>
>> --
>> Thomas
>
> Hello, I feel compelled to criticize to be constructive and always look for
> improvement, but I Love the picture, geometric and tonal composition... now to
> the nitpicking:

I am always happy when people nitpick. I like to do it myself too with 
others and believe it is to everybody's good :-)

> The image works much better in small preview than at a bigger scale. This
> reveals a good potential, and lack of some details:
> * The tree trunks are too straight
> * The trees have not enough color variations (how many different tree models?
> maybe changing some of them for a new one with slightly different color would
> solve this)

Absolutely true on both points. Those are some of the planned 
improvements. Dryad needs a bit of massaging to give better results and 
I only used two models here, which of course is way too few.

> * Though this may be realistic, the water appears too dark , that is probably
> because the view angle is too high, with Fresnel not allowing the sky color to
> get reflected enough, lowering it might also let us see some of the surface
> waves to add some nice detail that probably are already there.
> Be careful not to loose that type of background rock you have, it's beautiful
> and makes much of the point of the picture.

There is matter for some thoughts here. The water is a media with 
absorption and scattering densities. The surface itself has too little 
reflection indeed and could be improved.

>
> * isn't scale of the clouds too small? making them bigger would create larger
> holes where the "moon" could be let visible and still get some occlusion from
> the clouds, because as it is, the moon looks closer than the clouds.
> *beaches are too vertical, ideally a small fringe of the terrain with lower
> slope would make them less linear, but I guess it must be difficult depending on
> how procedurally the height field was generated... If not possible then I would
> try to make the sandy yellow line much thinner to make up for that.

I was expecting this! ;-) The point is that those as /not/ clouds but a 
starscape, maybe somewhere closer to the galaxy's hub. Star clusters and 
groupings are supposed to represent this aspect. Of course, the 
image_map used of an Apophysis flame is not really star-like nor 
realistic but I liked this nonetheless for an alien sky, and why go all 
the realistic way after all?

As far as clouds are concerned, there is a scattering media present 
which expresses the heat of this planet but no clouds are formed at this 
hour of the day.

>
> Great work and a hard subject to depict !
>

Thanks!

-- 
Thomas

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