The terrain seems nice, but considering there are so many tumbling rocks, I would expect some in the water. Straight on lighting doesnt form interesting shadows or reflections.

this is rather like the glacial lakes up here, called "tarns" Here's a link to "Snow Lake" in Washington's Cascade mountains: http://k43.pbase.com/u4/aero_lp/upload/20308205.IMG_0807LargeWebview.jpg The thing you'll see is that there are larger boulders, and smaller pebble sized "scree"; your rocks are all the same size . . .the scale of the surrounding ridges is also much bigger than you have it here. Light comes from the sky above, and so its always very, very blue, or somewhat gray (if overcast), but never has the warm tones in the picture.

Wow!! very realistic image. Looks like a photograph. Very well done.

Very well done. 5+.

Thanx all, for the crits and remarks and comments too :) The scene, beleave it or not, is actually based on a real place I've been to years ago, and thats about how it looked. Despite the feeling that more rocks should be showing out of the water, that doesn't always work that way in real life. These types of "slides" tend to just do that, slide, as they get rain eroded away, then the rocks and bigger boulders start to slide down the slope and get stuck near the edge of the water and never really make it into the pond there. And I know someone said all there is are boulders, but guess i must of really blended things, cuz there are loads and loads of small rocks all the way up to larger boulders. My settings were to set most rock objects to be about 15-30% burried in the ground, just like they do in real life, which is my goal with all my latest works, to get those more realistic rocks and terrains to be like things really are, as most people seem to set these things right on the surface of the ground, and that's no where near how they really are. The lighting did bug me, but I am at the point to where I want to get on to my far more complex canyon scene, i just need to find the foto I have to work off of LOL Again, thanx zillions for ALL comments and suggestions, I take them all to heart :)

Hey there, old bud! IMHO, you did an excellent job with this. I've often encountered places in the real world that don't behave the way we might expect them to in our digital versions. LOL Things like boulders that defy the laws of gravity, etc. Yep, when you sink your rocks like that, many of the smaller ones seem to vanish completely. I always use copied terrains made invisible, just so I can have layers of ecos with different settings. Good stuff, Mark!

Good job.

Hey!, there you are, Steve! Great to hear from you, long time no hear? LOL Anyway, yep, everything you said are all true things. There is this one boulder in our desert that defies gravity and seems to ballance itself on just a tiny little point of the HUGE boulder and never seems to tip over LOL Anyway, as for the rocks and such and the various levels in which they are planted into the ground, I used to do things the way you just mentioned, of faking invisible terrains and all for each set of rocks. But!, now that I work with Vue6, I don't have to do things like that anymore, hehehe ;) I can add as many eco layers to a material as I want to, unlimitted! It's really awesome getting to work like that these days and I just keep getting better and better at figuring things out and coming up with more and more techniques to set the altitude levels and scattering settings all by using the new tab in Vue6 which lets you actually set with total control, things like bottom, top and bottom/top fuzziness levels for each and every eco layer I use. And the smaller rocks 'are' there and visible, people just aren't looking close enough LOL I am planning on making some new tutorials pretty soon, since so far, I haven't really seen any tuts on this last tab in the Material Editor and how to put it to use? So I think it's about time someone explain it to people with visuals and understandable explinations and theories and techniques. So, this summer, people, look for lots of brand new tutorials coming out from md-arts.com.