Kirk Andrews wrote:
> Hi Arttu,
> 
> Very nice image.  I love sunset scenes, and I like the mood and subject of your
> image.  You've done really well with media.

Thanks!

> That said, I offer a few things that I would do:
> 
> With such atrocious render times, I would actually drop the media--there's
> nothing in this image that could not be achieved with a good skysphere and fog.
>  In fact, a good skysphere could probably even offer a more realistic and
> dramatic result.

I guess it would indeed work. It's just that this whole scene evolved
from my atmosphere-experiments (which were mostly inspired by your
atmospheres and clouds, actually ;)) and it's nice to know that I can
chance the whole lightning by just moving my sun around. It's another
question if that's worth the rendering times, but :P


> I would also drop the focal blur.  I agree with the others--focal blur in this
> image would be minimal, and it would be easier to simply add a little blur to
> the foreground later in GIMP or Photoshop.  I think you'll find that focal blur
> is the cause of the majority of your render time.

Yep, at least I have rendered this in full size once before w/o blur,
and it took only 'bout 14 days ;P But yeah, I'll see what I'll do about
the blur.

> I think your greens are too green and too homogeneous.  My recommendation would
> be to drop it down to something like rgb <.1,.2,.0>, but use a cells pigment
> with turbulence 1, lambda 10 to get some nice, realistic variation.  I would
> apply this to both the tree leaves and the grass.  I know you mentioned grass
> being in the render, but I can's see it (perhaps because the focal blur is
> obscuring it).  If it is there, I would make it much taller and more irregular.
>  For the foreground, I think you need to add some quite tall grass and
> vegetation.  Gilles Tran has several varieties of grass-like plants that you
> could add.

There really is real grass (Gilles' MakeGrass) in foreground, but the
focal blur ate it away :(. I'm experimenting with that cells pattern
right now, and it looks promising. Plants sounds like a good idea; I'll
try those too.


> I don't know what method you used to create the terrain, but I think adding some
> more irregularity and character would add a lot.  When I create terrain, I
> usually use an isosurface or a pattern-generated heightfield using a function
> based on something like this:
> 
> function {
>   pattern {
>     wrinkles
>     poly_wave 3
>   }
> }
> 
> Or, you could start with the terrain you have, but use trace to drop in
> isosurface rocks and boulders along the banks of the river to get a bank that
> doesn't simply slope straight into the water.

It's a heighfield which is generated from an image that is made with The
Gimp. I'll try to do something with it. Also the idea about rocks sounds
good.

And thanks for the function, I have always wondered how you make your
landscapes. I don't think I'll use it in this image though, but I'll
remember it next time when I'm doing landscapes :)

> Those are my suggestions; I hope you find them helpful--I look forward to seeing
> what you come up with.

Thanks a lot, I really appreciate them. I'll see what I can do.

> Kirk

-- Arttu Voutilainen

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