I'm told that every post here starts "Hi, thanks for looking in." Not this one. But I do appreciate your taking the time to click on the thumbnail and check out the image. "Amid the Ruins" started (as so many of these things do) with a sketch idea that somehow morphed into a three day project. Vue 8i render with some minor postwork in Photoshop. The idea, initially, was to try a thick forest atmosphere with Stonemason's "Greek Ruin" prop in the foreground. Well, that needed some ivy and vines... and then some moss and pebbles. Before I knew it, I had a fleshed-out image which desperately needed a focal point. Enter the daisies, refugees from another picture that didn't quite work out. Well, then it had to be rendered, high quality and large... twenty three hours later you see the result. The material setup here is similar to 'Shattered Temple' but with some lessons learned: 1) I kept Stonemason's original texures as the base layer on the Ruin and added layers of procedural stains and lichens over that. 2) I now have access to Wabe's mosses from Cornucopia 3D. They're sweet. 3) I'm still learning how to properly scale the ivy from Thomas Luft's Ivy generator. I've also found that exporting the prop from DAZ Studio as an obj, opening it in UV Mapper and Triangulating the model is essential to good results in Ivy generator. The daisies are are LB Daisies from DAZ. I tweaked the materials in Vue to add a goodly amount of back lighting. The background trees are a dynamic ecosystem just sitting on a simple terrain. 'Summer Cherry' and 'Broad Leaf Straight Trunk' for those playing along.... Atmosphere was setup with an atmospheric perspective of around 25 and a good deal of Glow and haze to get that "humid summer morning" effect. The sunlight could probably have benefited from a 2degree or so softening effect, but by the time I realised I'd forgotten it, we were fifteen hours in and I think it looks okay. Still, it irritates me.... Global radiosity with a quality setting of '4' and atmosphere turned up to '6' for this one with user tweaked render settings somewhere slightly above 'final' and 'smooth' anti-aliasing to make the atmosphere creamier. For those enjoying my recent Middle Earth stylings, this image was *almost* called 'Ithilien.' Maybe it needs some rabbits for that. If you'd care to leave some comments as to what you think could be done better I'd surely appreciate them. This image was *vastly* improved by remarks left on some of my recent work, so my thanks to those who took the time (you know who you are!). Have a great holiday season and end of the year!