I halted normal work on the WIP to test out some of Orbital's postworked sky methods. Instead of doing it like I'm supposed to with matching the atmosphere and reflections to the sky image, I just cut some object masks and layered them on. The crappy effort returned a crappy resulting edge (where cliff meets sky), and it still looks crappy even after I postworked the hell out of it. However, at least now I know I can do it, and hopefully improve it with some kind pointers from all the sky savants here. Also, the beam of light is a test of massive motion blurring on a painted white streak. And furthermore, before anyone even asks, the rope ladder will connect to the far structure. Eventually. And the dangling end of it in the middle of the scene will have a dude hanging from it miserably.

Hummmmm, am I missing something here? Is there an image that goes along with this post somewhere?

Oh, yes. (Sheepish grin)

Do you have Gamma Correction on??

MoonGoat, theres a question in my mind as to where the foreground light is coming from. Your scene seems to be unusually color bright, thus the question about gamma. Secondly, on the horizon, youve done a good job overall on the sky but the horizon doesnt ring true. There should be mixing and blurring here so that it would be a little hard to distinguish abruptly where each starts and ends.

I'm guessing you have a radial light in there judging by the shadow castings. My advice is to stick to just normal sunlight for now to achieve a more natural effect. Something that may help is choosing a different pov more looking up at the structure. If you adjust the document set-up to something more like portrait as opposed to landscape you will still be able to see the water. The main thing with the sky is it does'nt match the colour of the water, it is too purple as opposed to blue. Remember I don't always get the results I want when useing this method, and have scrapped a few pieces of work as a result. Just keep practicing and try out some different skys and blend methods. Morguefile has some excellent royalty free sky photos especially by a photographer called cohdra. Keep at it as this certainly has the potential.

Thanks all, I'm gonna keep experimenting, definently gonna find some better matching skies.