Mountain View From the Creek

So I was fishing near my house the other day and the rain was coming in, so while I was looking for a big tree to huddle under, I couldn’t help but notice this gorgeous photo opportunity! Framed by the trees, guiding lines from the clouds, contrasting lighting, varying saturation, rule of thirds where the mountains ends creating the valley, the “valley” will be my focal point.

This is a picture I took with my phone, it really doesn’t do it much justice, I wish I had a good camera with me, it was amazing. Anyway, I did edit the pic while I was waiting out the rain, I tried to get it to look more like what I was seeing. I’m not trying to do an exact reproduction in CG of this image, I’m trying more to get a nice shot, something like what would be in a painting.

Here is the original photo, with the lighting edited a bit.


Here is the totally raw image:


Cropped the photo to get a better composition:


And made some simple guidelines for when I start modeling:


Just (finished?) the grass, might need a little bit of work on the material for it but, it’s good for now.

No HDRI yet, working on that right now.


Going with a mist pass or will you be venturing into volumetrics?

I know more about volumetrics than mist so, I think I’ll go with volumetrics. Working on the clouds at the moment, I think I’m going to put a big emitter plane behind them, it’s looking pretty good at the moment. I might not need world volume.

I’m actually almost done with this render! I started a WIP thinking it would take a while!

looking forward to it

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?352038 DONE!