a pic i am working on. started as an experiment in shadow-casting smoke.
c&c welcome
thanks
nAte
Whoa, I vote tutorial!! LoL
Nice shadow effect with the smoke and sun and all.
Sand/desert could use a touch of work.
Plus I don’t see any tracks… but still. w00t!! Make a bigger one so I can put it on my desktop! LoL 
WOW!
great composition! great lighting!
rad!
bigger pic, i want desktop!
with the sen that low, you could really utilise seme bump maps…
thanks for the comments.
heres a small update: changed ground a bit, fixed shadows
tut? on what?
nAte
:o :o :o :o :o
Excellent. bump up the ground more.
- Satish.
Very nice
background tank and smoke and sun are very convincing
Foreground tank maybe lacks bevels, and surely have too flat tracks. Looks like toy tank rubber tracks, not chain-link-steel tracks.
Keep it up
Stefano
oh yeah, the tracks were a quick thing
i don’t like any of the current methods of making tracks so i was trying to figures something else out
i figured something that would work awesome if the dupliframe settings were animatable.
thanks for the comments
The bump map on the floor looks inverted, surely it should be a cracked desert, so the lines should be indented?
Lovely image.
Alex
oh. whoops. ur right! the bump map is inverted
for the particle casting shadow,
did you use a plane with shadow only??
For the sun…is this a blender one? Look pretty photoshoped 
if yes, you should try the blender one…with some tweaking you can make some very cool thing!
Anyway I really like the mood, it’s really a great pic!
Wow… that is pretty cool~ I like it! You make some nice models…
Hmm…Very interesting…
I think I just figured out how you did this…
its not hard: just make a duplicate particle maker with dupliverts of a cube, and set alpha to .001 so that you can’t see the cubes but they still cast shadows. I think it turned out pretty good. Unfortunatly, the shadow on the ground is really “cubey” but the volumetrics look good.
why not use shperes instead of cubes?
also i’ve been tryin to find a way of doing tank tracks chesk out the q&a forum. also posted a q on the ptyhon forum about a track script but no answers…
could I plleeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaase get a big 1280x1024 render of that!! i love it!
that is so badass!! ahhhh!!!
please please??
-pandora
Very nice work man!!!
To be honest tho, i like the first image better, at least for the way the dried up riverbed type ground is cracked. In the second image it looks like the ground has veins, rather than cracks. The first defiantly looked more like a riverbed to me…
And i just love the way the sun is peeking out the side of the smoke and the subtle rays, very nice touch man. And a great job on the smoke too!!! 
Matt
Blend on, and blend well!!!
Those tanks look great, nive smoke too! one thing: is it a night scene? Doesn’t like daylight, imho
Hehe…well, It sure as hell doesn’t look like a nightscene… 
Nate: Yeah, this is how I figured you’d done it…I’ve been trying to use the same kind of setup to create realistic clouds with good sunlight penetration but It is very, very hard. :-?
actually that could almost be a nighttime scene if that light was a luminances flare that we used while I was in the Corps. There are different versions of the flares, but the ones that i am talking about are actually fired from artillery units – And these puppies are so bright that you’d swear that it is day time. Also, they were so bright that your eyes will burn if you look directly at them. Other versions can be fired from mortors, and i’ve even seen a gernade launcher version.
Nice work btw… i would like to see the battle field look a tad bit more rugged – maybe some fox holes or craters from incoming fire. Also… show a third tank way in the background – Tanks units do not enjoy traveling in groups no smaller then 3 
looks great! nice tanks. maybe could use some distant mountains on the horizon.