So I made this mountain and got the materials set up and used an environment map and a sun light but to me the lighting looks really flat.
I’m honestly not sure what to do to make it look a little bit better but there’s definitely something missing. It might be that the mountain looks a bit flat? A bump map of some sort might help with that?
First up, the biggest thing that I see is missing is all the detail in the ground material. You need to get some rock normal maps and put them on all the surfaces. Make sure they make the ground look rough and as detailed like real rocks.
You could also go with some adaptive subsurface if normal mapping is not enough. Adaptive subsurface would make it look really nice without making the render times painfully slow (closer details get higher resolution geometry, distant details get lower resolution geometry)
The next thing would be to start filling up the scene with extra details. Real mountains and cliffs have many more elements. I suggest adding lots of smaller rocks scattered everywhere, shrubs and plants in all sorts of crevices, etc.
The other thing I noticed is that the world doesn’t seem as bright as it should be, especially with what is direct sunlight and scattered clouds. There should be much more contrast between the lit areas and the shadows.
I took your suggestions and made it brighter, added smaller rocks scattered around (I’ll probably add more for the next render though), added some dead plants, and added a normal map to the rock material.
It already looks so much better so thank you for your suggestions because they helped so much. To me the ground looks a bit too polygonal so I’ll smooth it out a bit more and I’m also going to add more small stones scattered around. I also might go in afterwards and add a bit of dust in photoshop or something just for that extra ambience.