Here's the latest render of this tower-by-the-sea. It's progressing well, but alas, I fear that my attempt at creating convincing waves and splash has fallen far short. Back to the Terrain Editor for awhile to try to make good-looking waves and spray... Any other ideas? Comments and critiques are very welcome...

Waves are bloody hard to do. I've tried and failed many times. I look at Hobbits waves and think that Photoshop may be the best way. but then that relies on traditional art talent, which I am lacking. I like the slight spiral effect you've got going on the tower. Very cool. Was that by accident or design?

It's just an optical illusion, I assume because of the angle... The tower is actually symmetrical, only the skeletons aren't. I don't know how I'm gonna do these waves, we'll see...

Great scene. I love the terrain work you've done. Really the only advice I can offer is the title. The green (grass?) doesn't say 'desolate' to me. Look forward to seeing more. :)

This is turning out fantastic, I have to agree about the grass. Water? When working with water, post gives me the most control. The "pureanodyne" brushes for photoshop are the best I've seen. Also working with very large files helps with control.(memory intensive though) If you work in PS & want to try the brushes let me know.

Aye, the only problem is you can't animate with postwork the same... If at all. I'm not gonna paint frames all day in After Effects... Then again, at a ten hour render time, nobody's animating anything! (sneaks off to play with Maya for a bit...)

I think the water breaking looks very very good, and if you just add some foam, it will look much more realistic. I really like how this was laid out. The whole image has the colors of a sunset.

Thanks, DVD. It's the photo-sky (Mayang's) + Brycean sky method. I merely took 5 2d squares, mapped the photo-sky to them, and positioned them in a huge, distant box formation around the scene. This way, the water will pick up skies from each side and the back and top of the scene, as well as the 2D square stretched out in the camera's viewpoint... I'd normally use a half-sphere, but there were few artifacts so I just left it that way... So you set the 2d sky photo to Blend Transparency, and the Brycean sky comes through a bit since it's infinitely behind everything. Turn up the bump to 500 on the 2d photo-sky, and boom, you're in...