Hello and thanks for visiting. "Misty Mountian Hop" is, oddly enough, the second image I've posted with a Led Zeppelin song for the title... both rendered in Vue. If you've looked at my last two images "The Badlands" and "Mountain Flight" - you're aware that I've been working with the excellent tutorials avaialable over at Quadspinner.com. This was my first attempt to apply what I've learned to an original composition, as opposed to simply messing about with the techniques and seeing what comes out the other end. This was conceived as a portrait of Gwaihir the Windlord - chieftan of the Great Eagles of Middle Earth. I wanted to show him high in the mountains, possibly about to discover Gandalf after the fight with the Balrog. The plan was to create the environment and use the DAZ Eagle for the main character. The environment creation went well... I had sort of envisioned the establishing shot for Peter Jackon's "Two Towers" as a mental reference. I used one procedural terrain for the mountains, one infinite procedural terrain for the background. Sky at dawn. Got some meta-clouds in there for little puffs of cloud against the mountain. Then there was the Eagle. I could not for the life of me get the materials on the eagle looking good enough for even a middle ground render. The background looked so nice it made the eagle seem horribly out of place. Finally I relegated him to the background where he didn't look so nasty and went with the piece as a landscape shot. Oh well. There is a LOT to master in Vue that is for sure. Details... The background terrain is the default 'natural' infinite procedural terrain. Foreground terrian is a procedural with the 'terrain' fractal adjusted with the Quadspinner methodology. The mountain material is three layers - terrapak rock, terrapack vertical cliffs and some snow. I adjusted the environmental properties of the layers to get the high mountian snow effect I wanted. I usually go with mixed materials - this was my first time working the material as a layered material and I found that I have somewhat finer control over the outcome. A small distinction, but worth mentioning. There are two meta clouds - one in front of the ridge and one behind. I played with them for several hours to get the right level of "whispy-ness" and volumetric effect. The lighting is Global Radiosity. Sky settings were informed by the Quadspinner tutorials but I was going for a more painterly feeling here so there is probably a bit more sunlight decay than would be considered 'realistic.' Quality settings on the clouds and lighting were both at +4. Scene was rendered with 'final' render settings and ran to about ten hours at 1920x720. No postwork except framing and titles. Production Credits: Eagle2 and Expansion from DAZ 3D. Some materials from Chipp Walters excellent 'Terrapak' for Vue. Quadspinner's "Capturing the Brilliance of Light" and "Realistic Procedural Terrains" tutorials were the basis for the image. Ami and Vladimir Chopine's "Vue 7 From the Ground Up" also proved handy as a reference. As always your comments and constructive criticism are most appreciated. If you have any suggestions for improvement I'm always very glad to hear them so please do not hesitate to post your thoughts!