Approaching the Island

Very kind, Horo! Could not agree more. A bit of rotation of that water bump would have improved this shot a great deal. I was hesitant to adjust it for one single shot, but that is not good in and of itself. Likely, I did not want to spend the time in the lab when changes can take such a long time to implement in a session with some instancing complexity. And again the describe perfectly the technical reason for the water material turning out as it did. You do know your Bryce! Yeah,the foam solution is not quite working for me, i need to come up with something better.

Yup, very nice scene, Rashad-like. The water takes up almost half of the picture and it is the weakest part. I think the problem is the wide angle of view of the camera and the nearness to the water. If the waves were rotated by 90?, it might look better. If you look at the water at such a shallow angle, it tends to look solid because you get a lot of reflection (from the refraction) and no transparency, no matter how high you set it. Sky and clouds look very natural.

Thanks so much!! Hmm, plastic water. I can see that. Ideally, one of my cardinal rules is that I do not use diffusion on water, for diffusion makes liquid water appear somehow solid. In this case, to produce the foam, I layered two 2d faces with cloud materials on them on top of the water slab. This in a sense provides diffusion information, and the result is that the entire water effect comes off looking a bit plastic. If I remove the cloud mats as clouds the water below looks wet again as it should. This scene has been a major test for me, figuring out how to accomplish the complexity was one thing, but the overall scaling has been a bigger challenge. Will see what I might do to get a better foam. In the wide angle shot, this foam is part of what is causing those white specks visible from the air. This sea foam may be more trouble than it is worth. Thanks again for feedback!!

Sky, clouds, lighting and vegitation, excellent. Like C-ram I have reservations about the water and to me the beach material seems a bit too uniform. The complexity of this scene is staggering. 5/5

Except the water wich look a little bit plastic, everything is beautiful rashad. Clouds fit perfectly into this idyllic landscape, lush vegetation is really beautiful, what a good management! We can feel the warmth of the light in the image, which is otherwise rare in a Bryce image! Congrats and a 5/5 for me.