The supplied picture is a work in progress. Pay no attention to the rock texture as it never got changed from 3 hours ago when this was a desert scene. Anywho, up on the ridge on both sides of the canyon (well a small canyon but canyon none the less) are a bunch of trees. All total there are probably 30 of them spread out to give it depth. Problem is that is 15 more than I wanted to put in there. I want the look of a forest without having to place a true forest of trees. Anyone have any hints of tips on how to fill in the background without moving the poly count into astronomical numbers? Also, any hints for placing grass. I am looking for a pasture sort of look but grass can raise the poly count in a hurry too. Not to mention that unless you scale the grass up quite a bit it would take you decades to populate even a small section of ground with it.

I tend to make just the foreground trees real and then use terrains to suggest the trees behind (see the distant forest tutorial in the manual). Another way would be to map a render of a tree onto an alpha plane and then duplicate that a number of times (or several different renders for a bit of variety). Although I haven't tried it yet, I imagine you could try something similar with grass, using the object close to the camera and then either some sort of mapped terrain or layers of alpha planes further away to add depth. Adding a bit of grit to the terrain can improve the appearance of the default grass textures as well. I also create foreground shrubs using vertically squashed versions of trees partially embedded into the ground. -- Mark

The picture is nice (difficult to represent a forest). What type of render did you use (final) ? With lot of polygons in this type of scene it's very hard to impose the highest quality for the render. Maybe you could improve the sky and the look of grass texture (very difficult to obtain a realistic) in the foreground ...

Yeah, I'd go with the alpha plane idea if polygon count is an issue, and the distant forest idea works very well for a distant forest where detail isn't necessary. There's a cool little tutorial about that Here. About tall grass, I found something maybe useful to you Here. You can easily change the color of the weeds to more clorsely resemble grass, in the material editor. Somebody else may come along with better ideas, but I tend to just make lots and lots of plants and plan on a long render for high quality.

Yeah the grass was a quick and dirty test to see what I got just using the defaults. Actually I intended to remove it from the final render but forgot about it. Going to spend most of the night tonight going over the ridgeline and the grass, once I am happy with that I can import some more figures from poser to make the scene. Thanks for all the help folks, as usual you guys/gals (must be politically correct) are great.

ack!! what's that guy with the assault rifle doing in this pastoral landscape!?!? :)

Wow, that alpha plane thing is wonderful. If ever I run across the author I definetly owe him a beer. Going to spend an hour or so alpha mapping 3 different trees of each of the major species so I have them available when I need them.

The author was tradivoro (Paul), and he posts here fairly often. Check THISthread out for more on alpha planes. :)

Have to agree with bloodsong on this one....I spent too many months in Southeast Asia in the late 1960's to enjoy anything at all about that assault rifle in all that beautiful greenery. This scene and my comment say volumes about our respective ages.... Otherwise, this is the beginning of a really nice composition. Sincerely, Rivers

To answer your question bloodsong, I am a military nut. I have no less than 45 different books behind me on every war fought over the past 70 years that America was involved in. Now, by nut I dont mean that I live in a concrete bunker and have 8 years of MRE's stored away but that is my primary interest. Outside of the computer, reading, and the history channel there isn't a lot else I spend much time on other than the whole work thing (damn house payment). Anyway, I originally bought vue so that it could complement Poser. But now I find myself more drawn to working in Vue and just using poser to accent the pictures I build. Anyway, I find myself drawn to animals and military figures when bringing figures into poser most of the time. Not sure why but my first 3 real pictures contained an animal of some sort, not as a focal point but more of an accent piece. Now if I can just get someone to model me a Pomeranian my wife would be in heaven as we have one that believes firmly that it is our only child.