Attached Link: http://www.tiggerbear.com

Another way to do it would be to use World space mapping, which uses the same coordinates regardless of object orientation or poly density. This may not be feasible for your objects or textures, but it's nice with procedural textures and such. One thing to also check is that the polygon seams between your terrain and the ground are as seamless as possible. A good way to do this is to filter the terrain altitudes so that the slope of the filter at zero is almost flat, then gradually ramps up. (a good example is the "young mountain" preset, but it doesn't have to be that extreme)

Yes, bloodsong, the pic is an unretouched render, and I believe that is a secondary reflection behind the water inside the glass. I was pleasantly surprised to see it myself. =) I'm considering lowering the transparency level of the glass itself just a bit; that might show a bit "harder" of an edge at the table. Alternatively, I could do a little fancy Boolean work to create a "rounded" bottom, rather than the straight right angle of the cylinder. I think I'm also going to dim the light just a bit, or maybe just add more falloff. I'm not sure I like the stark contrast of the shadow edge running diagonally down from the lip of the glass. I don't think that the opacity of the glass is the issue (an earlier render with a different light showed much more transparency in the glass), rather I think that there's too much light "filling" the interior of the glass. I don't think I'll touch the camera angle or object placement, for fear of losing that very cool secondary reflection. I am, however, going to back off the DoF a bit, to pull more of the floor into focus. Any other thoughts, or reactions to my ideas here, let me know! Thanks for all the input so far.

My system specs are: Dual Celeron 466, overclocked to dual 525 468 MB ram Windows XP Pro Elsa geForce 2, 32MB I get right around a 9.0 on the Cinebench dual render benchmark, version 6. (by comparison, a dual Athlon MP 1900+ scored a 35.46 in a recent test by Tom's Hardware, and my other machine, a K6/2-350 running Win98, scored a 2.49, with a single CPU) As to the first point: it's difficult to get a horizon line with the darkness in the background, and I wasn't sure that it would go well with the closeup feel of the image. This is one of the reasons I was considering a wood finish for the ground, but I didn't have time to pursue that further. Would a fine-grain wood finish help add some visual perspective? Perahps I simply need to reposiiton the spotlight, so the shadow becomes more pronounced...

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=152793&Start=1&Sectionid=3&WhatsNew=Yes

It's amazing what one can do with a single volumetric point light and the right gel... =) Rendering an updated version now; will post as soon as it's done (probably tomorrow morning).

well, you could also go into the options screen (within Vue) and set the slider for "instant draw" closer to Fast. Vue does two refreshes in order to display the quad views, an Instant Draw and a Final Draw. Pushing this slider farther to the left will decrease the quality of the instant draw, but also vastly decrease the delay between updates. It will have no effect on the final view quality, so if you want to see the full shading, just wait for Vue's drawing threads to catch up. In complex scenes or scenes with heavy fog, that can take a while, even on a fast machine. Hope this helps you out!

Another way to do this, in keeping with the mythos of Atlantis, would be to do the second series of renders after re-texturing the buildings to match the ocean floor. It'd look like the buildings aren't there, just part of the ocean, but a comparative look at the two renders would show the "hidden" features. =) Don't forget to use world-space textures, so there aren't any telltale seams between objects.

Okay, after two weeks, my Vue is due to arrive tomorrow, according to UPS tracking!!! Look for my first images from the full version soon.

Here's something that just occurred to me: try making the clouds in the sky a bit "busier", as opposed to soft and wispy. That might help the sense of scale a bit. Thanks on the "Morning Mist". Took me four hours to get that sky just right... =)

I would move that backlight away. The nice perspective lines you have going with the pillars are broken up too much by the trees. Try something else with the trees, like putting them behind the pillars? Also, the statue seems to be the focal point of the composition (at least it seems that way to me), but it's not detailed enough for that. Could you perhaps move it closer to the camera? Overall, I like the idea, but you're right, it's not quite there yet.

Nicely done on the depth of field, but for some reason it feels like a scale model. Perhaps if you made the plants smaller, or added small tufts of grass near the column bases?

This is actually a simple problem, and I'll put my reply here to share with the community. Change the original object's center to be the point around which to form the circle, then multi-replicate by rotating. Rather than rotating in place, the new objects will be formed in an "orbit" around the newly defined center. You can do some cool things with spirals by resizing or translating at the same time, too.