shadowdragonlord pointed out that the dirt in one of my images would look better if I increased the terrain resolution. This is the original. The rendering with increased terrain resolution will be in my next post. Two questions: 1. Does the dirt look better in the second image? 2. Besides increasing rendering time, is there a reason not to use higher terrain resolutions?

And with higher terrain resolution.

To be quite honest, I can't really see the difference between the two. :) To answer your second question, it really makes no sense to use higher resolutions on terrains that will be in the background of an image, if only for the reason that the farther away from the camera the terrain is, the less detail that will be visible. In a way its good because you don't have to worry about seriously tweaking your background terrains with complex effects, because the extra work won't really be noticable anyway. As an example, when making ocean waves out of terrains, I usually use 1024 res, or at least 512, for waves in the foreground, and go all out shaping the terrain. As the waves progress away from the camera, I start to lower the resolution in steps, spending less and less time on effects, instead concentrating on simply giving the terrain the basic shape of the waves. When rendered together, the waves in the foreground have nice definition, while waves farther away are less distinct, just as they would appear IRL. Hope this helps.

The second does look slightly better because the protusions don't have that unnatural angle to them, they are smoother. So really the only time you need high res terrains is in the foreground where you want a lot of detail or on an object that will be close up to the camera or needs a lot of fine detail. For example, let's say the trees are terrains too. The 2 in the foreground you would want high res but as you go back into the picture you can reduce the resolution and thus reduce the file size of the final image.

Both look equaly good.

I can see quite a diffence. Look at the squarish shadows the terrain casts on itself in the first. They are completely gone in the second. If the pics were larger it would be even more obvious.

The higher-res terrain has better shadows.

Nature does not do straight lines like sone of the terrain shadows in the first image. The text is good and hides most of it but not all, it's the shadows that usually betray one. I usually reserve the high res terrains for the immediate foreground but have used them occasionally in the midfield for serious rockface.

Aye, it looks much better now! Good job...