first of all there wasn't really a background to this because i was just fooling around with the tree builder the scene itself didnt take more than like 15 minute to compose. however when i got the look i liked i flipped the rendering on the full premium settings with soft shadows and true ambiance and despite the fact i didnt have a real back drop to it i think the tree came out rather good. the render took an hour and 20 minutes and was set on 16 rays per pixel which i played around before hand and noticed exponentially increased the render time to something like 8 hours or more if i went any higher than the 16 If you like what you see make sure to check out the rest of my gallery =)