Hi , I posted a landscape pic to the gallery the other day and here is a revised version. Carrara's skies are okay but they can tend to look similar. The sky in this image was done in Carrara but I think it doesn't jump out at you as being a Carrara sky. I really am beginning to think Carrara can compete with Vue or Bryce for landscapes, although my image has a ways to go yet to their level. Regards Mike Moir

Mike, I like it! Granted the background a little rough, but you did well with this! Very impressive! - TJ

I'm curious: How did you set up your distant mountains? Are they bump mapped terrains? What scale did you work in? Is everything just setup so it looks good, but is actually very close? Or, did you set a somewhat realistic distance? Are the birds objects? Or, flat planes with a trans map? Nice image! I've been experimenting with landscapes, what with the new trees in C3 now and all, but I keep running up against an old computers limits. :< (With a new baby @ home, I don't get much chance to do anything there, and the work computer just isn't up to the task.)

Bluetone, I set up the mountains just by moving them until they looked okay. They are terrains with one of the new preset shaders applied to them . The haze was applied in the atmosphere settings to give the image some depth. The Birds are very quick Sub D models I did in C3. Congrats on the baby . Bickermouse , yes I definitely need to get better at creating the terrains and texturing them.Something to work on in the future. Thanks for the comments. Regards Mike

mmoir, It's just a matter of scale/resolution - You'll get it down. I'm certainly no expert using height maps in Cararra.

I tend to throw in photographed skies in post. Or in the backdrop. The different between a real sky and the Carrara look is large (which Bryce in it's 'volumetric world' processor bashing mode does well, and Vue looks like it does a good job). If the sky had any significance in the picture I think there is much more to clouds then just a layer of white-ish stuff. There are a lot of free photographs on the net that will do the job easier and better then Carrara at this moment. Maybe it feels like cheating to get it from 'outside', but, especially with the broad spectrum of material available, why not be practical sometimes? When Carrara 4 or 5 does volumetric clouds, and my mac can render them in one night I will reconsider of course.

bluetone: funny you mention new baby, ours just went to sleep so I get a bit of computer time. I notice something that was bothering the heck out of me. If I leave the Ground Hight of the horizon at 0, and I have a very reflective object, It renders funny little black stuff towards the center of the image. It happen to me with two different projects that happened to have skies. It took a bunch of setting changes to figure out that it was the Ground Hight that was introducing this to my renders. I was about to report it as a bug, but since it had a workaround I didn't. I did notice that if you mess around with the sky dialog box long enough, you can get some decent results.

Mike, I'm primarily a Brycer but thought I'd duck into your forum to have a look-see. I really like your landscape and it has opened my eyes because it shows the versatility of Carrara.

Danamo, Thanks for the comments , I don't do landscapes in Carrara that much (this is 3rd one maybe) but I forsee that Carrara can still do much more in the landscape area . It just takes practice. Regards Mike

mmoir, you should do more! you seem to have a talent for it. Just out of curiousity are the plants C3, or did you model or import them ? (I'm using C2, but I heard something about C3 having trees and such.) Whatever they are they look very natural in your scene. - TJ

Bikermouse , All the plants and trees are C3's with the exception of the tall grass in the foreground which is Anything grows . Hopefully I can spend more time with landscapes in Carrara, its an area I want to explore more. Regards Mike Moir