Sacred Hilltop by theSea
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Description
Hello - 'nother fantasy image in Vue for you today. I feel that this image will reward the full size viewing with lots of subtle detail.
'Sacred Hilltop' was created and rendered in Vue 9.5 over the last two or so weeks. Initially this was to be a revisit of 'Shattered Temple' from a couple of years ago.
I corrected the scaling issues with the ivy in the earlier piece and used the Temple Ruin prop with the texture maps this time instead of going 100% procedural for the rock.
Temple Ruin from DAZ with Ivy created using Thomas Luft's Ivy Generator. All of the rock materials have additional bumps created using Quadspinner's 'Crack Maker' from the Material Development Kit, there are also layers of lichen, grunge and streaks.. each of these materials is five layers and there are fifty nine of them on the prop... plus the ivy.
The Elf-woman is Victoria 3 with the Morphing Fantasy Dress and Fair Fae hair - all from DAZ. Textures are from the "V3 High Fantasy Character & Clothing Bundle" from DAZ. This is the same woman from my image 'the Return' with a different texture on the dress. Re-use, re-use, re-use.
The pillar is from Stonemason's 'One Tree Hill' and the Crow is one of Noggin's.
The sky is mostly the same as the one I used in 'Lonely Hilltop' and features clouds from various of Dick Scherzinger's cloud products from Cornucopia3D. Global radiosity lighting and volumetric sunlight combined with a high 'decay' value produce this lovely cast of light which, I feel, brings an almost painterly feeling to the scene.
The background mountains were created using the 'Rocky Mountain' fractal that is new in Vue 9, and the midground hills have a very simple tree ecosystem on them. The foreground has a very dense grass ecosystem on it. All these ecosystems were dynamic, and combined with the many high-res textures on the temple prop; pushed Vue to the limit of RAM on my 8GB 64-Bit system.
I spent a lot of time tweaking the materials on the dress, the mountains (I went through several iterations of mountains) and of course the ruins... until I felt everything was ready for final render. My first attempt at final ran for about twenty hours and I decided that the lighting quality was not high enough (the midground trees were grainy) so I dumped that one and upped the atmospheric and lighting quality to +2.
I created a custom render quality setting that had most of the attributes of 'Final' but used the anti-aliasing settings from 'Superior' to keep all the grain to a minimum.
Final render on this image took 59 hours at 1920x720 pixels but I feel that the quality is worth the time. The image was saved as a 16 bit Tif file to preserve as much color data as possible.
Postwork included exposure adjustments, some manipulation of the color grading, a bit of sharpening and some enhancement of the glow on the right side of the image.
As always your constructive critique and comments are most appreciated. Thanks for looking!
I corrected the scaling issues with the ivy in the earlier piece and used the Temple Ruin prop with the texture maps this time instead of going 100% procedural for the rock.
Temple Ruin from DAZ with Ivy created using Thomas Luft's Ivy Generator. All of the rock materials have additional bumps created using Quadspinner's 'Crack Maker' from the Material Development Kit, there are also layers of lichen, grunge and streaks.. each of these materials is five layers and there are fifty nine of them on the prop... plus the ivy.
The Elf-woman is Victoria 3 with the Morphing Fantasy Dress and Fair Fae hair - all from DAZ. Textures are from the "V3 High Fantasy Character & Clothing Bundle" from DAZ. This is the same woman from my image 'the Return' with a different texture on the dress. Re-use, re-use, re-use.
The pillar is from Stonemason's 'One Tree Hill' and the Crow is one of Noggin's.
The sky is mostly the same as the one I used in 'Lonely Hilltop' and features clouds from various of Dick Scherzinger's cloud products from Cornucopia3D. Global radiosity lighting and volumetric sunlight combined with a high 'decay' value produce this lovely cast of light which, I feel, brings an almost painterly feeling to the scene.
The background mountains were created using the 'Rocky Mountain' fractal that is new in Vue 9, and the midground hills have a very simple tree ecosystem on them. The foreground has a very dense grass ecosystem on it. All these ecosystems were dynamic, and combined with the many high-res textures on the temple prop; pushed Vue to the limit of RAM on my 8GB 64-Bit system.
I spent a lot of time tweaking the materials on the dress, the mountains (I went through several iterations of mountains) and of course the ruins... until I felt everything was ready for final render. My first attempt at final ran for about twenty hours and I decided that the lighting quality was not high enough (the midground trees were grainy) so I dumped that one and upped the atmospheric and lighting quality to +2.
I created a custom render quality setting that had most of the attributes of 'Final' but used the anti-aliasing settings from 'Superior' to keep all the grain to a minimum.
Final render on this image took 59 hours at 1920x720 pixels but I feel that the quality is worth the time. The image was saved as a 16 bit Tif file to preserve as much color data as possible.
Postwork included exposure adjustments, some manipulation of the color grading, a bit of sharpening and some enhancement of the glow on the right side of the image.
As always your constructive critique and comments are most appreciated. Thanks for looking!
Comments (24)
London224
As one who likes detail and good lighting I have to say this is a wonderful composition... a bit of mystery and remembrance..well done!
Bossie_Boots
Oh wow this is outstanding you need to zoom the detail is incredible !!
ArtistKimberly
outstanding outstanding outstanding
Hubert
A fantastic scene and wonderful moody atmosphere!
Seahorse
Beautiful lighting and sky - excellent work!!!!
Tugpsx
See what a dedicated artist can accomplish. This is awesome work and very detailed thanks for sharing the procedures used. Definitely must see full version keep them coming
Orinoor
This is superb, everything about it.
ia-du-lin
great scene, wonderful atmo and landscape
Topaz_Rose
An epic scene..gorgeous lighting and textures! sublime work my feind!!
maraich
I never realized what a nice model the ruins were - I'm going to have to go dig through my runtime and pull it out. I won't be spending hours adding layers of cracks, lichen and such to it, but I'll enjoy it all the same. P 59 hours may seem like a lot to some folks, but after viewing the enlarged image I would say every minute was worth it. I've had Bryce renders that took much longer than that and didn't look 1/4 as brilliant. You asked me about Red Bubble and it may be that the quality of your artwork will elevate your sales well above mine. I know I'd pay to have a canvas print of this image.
reheller
That's a scene with perfect mood. @maraich: I second your comments, and I'd buy a canvas print anytime!
PhilW
Beautifully put together and atmospheric image! Thanks also for the detail of how you did it - certainly shows your attention to detail!
Seaview123
Good work on this scene!
Krid
great fantasy scene and composition
castaneda
Gorgeous fantasy image
bigbraader
Excellent mood & lightning.
fallen21
Fantastic scene!
Chaosphoto
magical and yet also realistic. Great workk :)
rogue29730
Beautiful landscape ! Awesome !!!
Rynn
So very beautiful! Well done. :)
kobaltkween
that prop is just incredible, despite its age, and you've worked with it excellently here. the light is beautiful and the mountains came out very well. i think the only thing that strikes me as off is what always seems to: it looks like you're not using linear workflow. i say that because it looks like your shading is off (brights too bright and courting yellow bloom, darks too dark) despite all the realism in the materials and textures. which works for an illustrated look, but for me seems to hold your more realistic works back. i love your composition and your light, and the sky is marvelous. you did a great job of getting the background to recede and not fight with the foreground. the mountains to the right of the pillar are especially realistic.
vintorix
Great and original concept beautifully executed!
Swidhelm
Awesome! I for some reason am enthralled by ruins, the idea of something more ancient, nearly forgotten. Very cool image!
anitalee
Excellent