Blender and ngPlant were used for modelling, Cycles for rendering. I ended up with 102,218,406 polygons at the end, took 5 days from start to finish and some time to render :P.
This is only my second fully complete nature scene, my first now 2 years old. Certainly quite a bit of improvement, hoping to become more frequently creative.
Please feel free to comment/critique!
Looking like real scene. Thanks for showing
pretty darn good, but why use so much chromatic aberration? It’s distracting!
It is a bit too strong, I added it at the last minute without really looking. I should have a less blurry version up by tomorrow 
EDIT: It’s up!
Not sure I like the camera angle but Wow IMO this is as good as anything out of Vue and I love the lighting. Just curious how many different plant’s and particle systems you used?
Congratulations. In my opinion this is a good example for using blender instead of other software solutions, e. g. Vue. How did you do the water? Is there displacement on the surface?
Saw it on DA, amazing work 
Thanks! I don’t think any camera angle could fix it, the composition in general is rather boring. Hoping to do scenes with more character to them in the future.
To answer your question, all the plants were distributed along the sculpted ground using hair particles systems with their own vertex groups to control particle density. I created 6 different plants in ngPlant for the scene, which I uninventively named “small tree” (150 particles), “small fern” (1200 particles), “clover” (200,000 particles), “fern” (80 particles), “tree” (77 particles), and “grass plant” (800 particles). The scene obviously failed to render on my graphics card :P.
Thanks! For the water I subdivided a plane and added a displacement modifier to add the ripples. I made/copied a glass shader with absorption as the material, to add a subtle amount of realism. I could have just used a bump map on the surface, but I found displacing the plane looked much better.
Beautiful! Needs more love.
Amazingly realistic and detailed, and I do agree with this looking like something that was done in a commercial application, it just shows how much improvement we’ve seen in Blender’s rendering capability since Cycles was unveiled.
What is your shader setup for the leaves?
Grate work ? could you move the Camera Little up.
Looking good man. Keep up the good work.
I agree with the above, I would move the camera a little bit up or down. Either one is fine, but I wouldn’t keep the river cutting the center of the image. Line it up with one of the line of thirds for a better visual effect. Also, your depth of field looks a little bit awkward from the camera point of view, but that might not be avoidable.
For me that translates to “GALLERY”
Looks really nice and judging by some of the stuff thats been added to the gallery lately, i see no reason why this shouldn’t be there tbh!
Very freaking amazing, show it on DA and already showed the love 
Thanks! This is the material I made for the leaves, it’s basically a mix of a glossy, diffuse, and translucent materials.
Thanks! I want to get around to watching your Nature Academy series, curious on your various techniques for natural modelling and rendering. It’s on my to-do list
It’s funny because your old scene has nearly the same lighting and feel as your new one:P Definitely nice work however, I would like to see some kinda texture on the leaves…on the trees and other vegitation mostly up close to the camera. The distant stuff could remain the same. The only reason I’m suggesting this is because you have such a detail texture on the bark:) I do know that especially with cycles, objects with solid diffused materails render much easier and faster. You just have to think about what will be close to the camera and what wont:)
Happy Blending:)
fantastic render but why you don’t share your blend file lol
