I haven’t had alot of time to create lately (unfortunately), but was able to spend about 2 1/2 hours on this scene. I installed 4Gb of RAM more on my rig a week or so ago (total of 8Gb now), and wanted to test out how far I could push the limits in 3d.
Winter Sunset has a total of 3,693,516,132 Polygons (not kidding) and Vue reported that I was using only 35% or my entire system resources! To give you even more of an idea how amazing this is – every plant/tree is grown differently, soft shadows are enabled, and the one directional light (the sun) is globally effecting everything in the scene.
The Winter Sunset image* rendered in approximately 3 hours 46 minutes. Really not that bad for how much Vue 6 had to calculate in this scene. After the image finished rendering, I changed the lighting and contrast a tad in Vue’s Post-Render Options (removing some of the lens flare that had glared a little too sharply). Moving to Photoshop CS3, I finished off the image by adding a slight overall blur, the widescreen frame, and my signature.
Enjoy!
*Prints of Winter Sunset will be availble shortly along with a print of Winter Sunrise, exclusive to my gallery on Deviant Art (Winter Sunset modified ever so slightly, but completely changing the time of day and mood). Check my blog or subscribe to my rss, as I will post again when the prints become available.
I love how the sunlight plays on the pine needles… really cool.