:eyebrowlift: maybe you can put there some clouds…definitely my favorit picture…
Looks incredible.
Latest render looks awesome, though its a bit oversaturated / over exposed!
Looks amazing!
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this looks great! The only thing that stands out to me are the rocks. A river in steep terrain would be moving fast and the rocks along the bank would be mostly smooth and rounded. And the water looks a little calm for a high mountain river also. Nice work !
That looks awesome, very well done.
Wow thanks Guys:P I’m making a few more renders from various locations:) I’ll upload today and tomorrow:)
Here are the additional renders guys hope you like:) There are some LOD issues when the camera comes closer to the ground:) But hey 6.5 billion faces…its ment for large scalerenders right:P hehe. Enjoy and Thanks:P
Wow man, just wow 
Maybe a little variation of the ground, instead of just rocks, would be better, but this is some seriously fine work sir
Also, one could argue that the leaves are perhaps a little too translucent - the ones lit from behind seem to be just as bright as the ones lit on the side.
Derek, they all look awesome, do you think it would be possible to some sort of flyby on scene, not sure if the polycount would rule animation out, but I would sure give it a try if it is possible.
Thanks Greg:P As always its nice to hear from you:) One the ground there is a grass texture in there using a mask between the rocks and the grass but its kinda hard to see with the tree coverage. The trees are placed basically over the same area as the mask for the grass texture:) And ya the translucency may be a bit off…I have to leave improvement for next time right:)
Harleynut97, a fly by would be awesome and definelty a possibility considering I’m rendering this each time at 600 samples 3840x1600 resolution which takes about 2 hours. So if I go to 720p and maybe 400 samples the time per frame shouldnt be too bad…maybe 20-30min per frame:) Thats do-able I think for a quick 10 second fly-by:) Would be really cool with some cycles motion blur in there:) I may have to add a bit to my terrain or add aditional land masses with trees to hide the horizon:)
I got some ideas:) May even do a new terrain all together but keep the mountain type rock valley but add more sculpting detail. Something like the environment in the movie Cars…red rocks with pines and leafy trees and shrubs:)
Fun Fun:P
Happy Blending!
I guess even at 720p it would be a huge rendertime investment, based on your numbers, but you might find when you throw in the motion blur you can get away with less samples than 400. The only way to find out is a test of some type… maybe just first render a 720p single frame at 200 passes, then one at 400 passes and see how much difference there really is… when you then factor in your going to have motion blur which will hide some warts … who knows what you can get away with.
Another option maybe is make your sky an HDRI background (which it may be already) and show more of the sky which will dramatically cut down on rendertimes…of course at the expense of seeing the entire screen filled with terrain. I had to do that a lot with the video I just did.
I could envision an ultralite or handglider just swooping through that terrain, because it came out beautiful… even if I had to do it at good ole standard def, I’d think about giving it a try and bringing it to life.
Animation is rendering since last night:P 20min per frame 150 samples at 75% of 1280x720. I’ve got motion blur on and hope it helps with the low resolution. True 720p was going to take 40min per frame:S a little too much for my taste and I have to use cpu because my 2gb video card get blown out:( I believe it about 200 frame so all most 9 seconds:) About 70 hours of rendering anyways:) Hope you guys will like it!
Happy Blending:)
Just wondering Derek, when you tried using the gpu did you try rendering in the viewport or an F12 render. I found for whatever reason if I tried to render in the viewport, i’d get the dreaded out of memory message on certain scenes. But I could often do the same render by using F12 or whatever it is to render animation like you would a still image, and my GPU would be able to handle it.
But with the huge amount of polys you mentioned before, Maybe it’s just not in the cards to do via GPU
Great Images! Remembers me the Tytos forest from Legend of the Guardians!
Waiting to see this in motion.
Harleynut97- It happens with a F12 render…when building the BVH it blows out and crashes blender:) I think the 6.5 billion faces is just too much. Its probably has to do with the medium resolution images I used in stead of low res or solid colors. Also I find when you add a noise texture and use it for bump detail it ways on the rendering pretty heavy depending on the detail level of the noise. I’m using it on the trunks of all the trees and plants. It helps add detail to the texture when the camera gets closer to the vegitation. I need dual 3Gb cards…that would be sweet!
Thanks everimo! Great words to hear coming from you:) Motion is coming:P
Whenever the scene won’t render in viewport but will in the proper f12 render, it’s probably because the amount of ram needed is really close to your limit that just a change in tile size, or clearing of left-over memory from previous viewport renders, will allow it to render It probably also does a few tiny optimizations for that camera.
Thats my guess anyways 
Oh and procedural textures use up a ridiculous amount of ram - it’s sometimes better to render a flat plane with that texture, save it out and make it seamless in gimp and then use that image instead. Has saved me a couple times
Thanks Greg:P Good info as always…I know we talked about the procedural detail memory usage before:) I never thought of rendering out a flat plane image and using that…billiant man:) Animation is still rendering:) I think I have around 150 of 220 completed:) Its looking good! I’ll post as soon as its done:)
Congrats Derek, Looks like Blender Nation has your image displayed in their header today… although you may not be able to see it, because your probably still trying to render out that animation
Guys thanks for all the feedback and support:P Some have been asking for it so here is the final fly through animation. I couldnt just go with the fly through of course so I made a bit of a production out of it and had a song in mind:P All done with blender and Gimp and video editing with audio all done in blender video editor:P
Hope you guys like:P I always appreciate feedback…but know this one is all wrapped up:P
Happy Blending!