WOW! That is a sweet pic! I would say its good enough that any comments should be taken with a grain of salt. I really like the pic. How can you mess with it @ this stage? I hate it when I have to keep going beyond a certin point just b/c it has a tendency to mess up what went right in the first place. (did that make any sense to you?) Anyway I really like how realistic the water looks, and I am very impressed with the complexity of how the cattails look.

Firstly, I like the image, it's got a good feel. Edges on the dog's shadowy reflection seem sharp. It looks like the sun's spherical shape at the top of the pic... if that is the sun, you'd expect the scene to be much brighter. You only get this kind of heavy silhoutte when the sun is completely below the horizon. In general, whether below or not, I wouldn't expect bright areas to be this blown out towards pure white without it adding more ambient to the whole scene.

very nice pic. Some things to make it more real- make bigger ripples in the water around the dog, put just a plain black cylinder at the base of the dog to give it some depth you can tell its 2D, also its kinda awkward how the fence abruptely ends but thats ok. Also, the sun is too high up in sky for a sunset which i think was the effect you were going for. Izuel

Here's what I think is wrong: You are better at this than me. Waah! Great pic. Reminds me of the landscape around here (Missouri), I love the way things look silhouetted against the sunset, and you've really captured that.

Wow ! =) It's really a great image . Good compo, great use of the wind atmosphere, beautiful colours too . Superb ! litst

Nice job, my 2 cents (take it for what its worth): Fence appears a little too big compared to its distance from the dog, the shape of the dogs body looks flat as judged by the water surrounding it and you should touch-up the ripple just above the dogs nose (looks like a fly or something on his snout). The contrast dosn't bother me, if your eyes are in very bright light (like looking at the sun) then everything will look dark & contrasty like that. P.S., don't try testing that theory!!!

WANT MORE info...did you render this in Carrara? How long was the render? How long did it take to put this together? Very nice.

Really nice! Only thing I'd pick at is the anti-aliasing; it's a bit jaggie on the sharp ends of the grass. I love the composition and dynamics of the image....

AzChip, do you mind if I ask what settings you use to get nice anti-aliasing? That's one thing I'm still having huge problems with. I thought I had everything set to max, but I still get jaggies. What do you do to insure maximum smoothness? Or do you just have to do it post rendering? I guess POV-Ray spoiled me in that respect, you just set the anti-aliasing by setting a number, and you could smooth things out as much as you liked.

I'm in RDS, and I set the anti-aliasing via the incomprehensibly named Adaptive Oversampling button in the current scene settings. I just click "best."

Hmm. Well, carrara has an Adaptive Oversampling which I set to max, and I also picked best so maybe this is going to be a problem for me.

The sky was the hardest I know you seem to the sun orb above the really bright point, I fought with the controls in the sky controls until I was crazy. I just really liked the silhouetted look it just seem to speak the mood. Iknow the shadow of the dog does seem a bit crisp. I'm going to blur it up some maybe... As anti-aliasing, sirface fedelity set to high, Adaptive to best, Rays Launhed to max. Render at 640/480@96dpi. Render in 17 minutes. Thanks for all the nice comments and great ideas!

Surface fidelity... I'm not sure I've messed with that. Is that a render room setting? Thanks!

Also, I wanted to mention I have a bunch of email buddies that this picture would really appeal to... they're really into field trials with their dogs (dogs are my other big hobby). Especially my labrador buddies. If you ever post it at large on the web, let me know; I'd love to show them this pic, even if it means they'll no longer be impresses with my 3D abilities.

Twillis The surface fedility controls are located in the Assembly room. Goto "Scene" in your Properties Tray scroll down you will see it. I 've bee told that it should be checked prior to inserting any objects in your scene (Not sure if that's true)But have noticed a difference when rendering scenes. As for the image it can be seen at Tucks_Place.homestead.com/Files/Images/IOTM1.jpg

Thanks for the info, and the link. I'll try it out tonight. --Terri