Finished up another 2.57 render (bi). Hopefully it is done, unless I get some good critiques
Critique, blender guru style 
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23382946/heading-home.jpg
red=bad
green=good
blue=suggestion
dont be scared by all the red writing 
it’s a really REALLY good start. atmosphere is epic!
Yes Greg is right the atmosphere is great !!!
Have you researched the physics of lightning and rainbows?
I think the main light source(sun) would have to be behind
the camera to produce a rainbow within the vista.
The origin of the lightning may be in the wrong area of
the clouds presented, and as already pointed out, it’s not
illuminating the clouds as it would in reality.
Hi Greg, thanks for the critique, thank’s exactly what I was looking for, and I appreciate your response.
Couple of questions to you…
When you say the “atmosphere is epic” are you refering to the sky or the overall art of the whole pic.?
What is meant by “color balance, dark=blue, mid + light=orange”?
What do you mean with “billboard grass”?..
As far as the lightning and the rainbow, I had just learned how to create them, and to use nodes and the compositor, (thanks to Andrew Price’s tutorial on lightning), wasn’t thinking much about the physics, as simonkinane pointed out.
I’m not sure I’d like to put vignette on the pic. though.
Again, thanks, for the critique, looking for response.
Mike
Hi All,
well I changed some stuff…
Instead of making particle grass, I created a group of grass particles on three planes each, and then on the main ground plane I used the group setting for the emitter, that seemed to save some render time and it appears better, more like brush, which is what I was trying to do.
I added a slight vignette in gimp, also a little dust.
Hope this is an improvement, if not let me know.
Here is the new pic.
Mike
Attachments
Much better!
Though where the lightning touches the sky it looks rather painted… not very intense light there (would have a sharper falloff, yours seems rather flat). And the rainbow still looks weird… should fade out over a longer distance
Thanks Greg, I’ll see what I can do with it. I certainly appreciate your feed back.
Looking forward to the tutorial on billboard use too.
looks very nice, I think if you added some mist to hide the edge of the land, or you can extend the area of the land and add some mist.
and I like the first lighting setup more, it looked more “sunrise-ish”
great enhancement to the cow texture and the grass.
good luck…
@Tuism: Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I appreciate it.
Actually this was meant to be a setting sun in the great western colorado desert.
The cow and grass seemed to be the hardest part of the whole thing. In fact, I probably will continue working on it, to get it all more realistic.
Mike