FibroJedi

Directly West of the City of Bezelan lies The Forbidden Heights. Dreadful rumours of what lies there have circulated down many generations. However the Circle ensures no foolish adventurers pass from its ports into the mountain range. The Wild Folk of the Marshes North of the Forbidden Heights suffer no intruders on its lands.

During the daytime, dark ominous clouds hang over peaks, but at night time Shadows guard themselves, leading to the occasional clear, starry sky. A picture of serenity hiding the true nature of what lies in the caves, crevices and crags of this imposing mountain range. The nights are never free of clouds, but if the Winds are free to roam, then these are reduced to light, wispy cirrus clouds.

Tools: Terragen, GIMP

Extra touches done: I needed to add stars into the sky but after Terragen had populated the clouds. Therefore I went back and ensured the stars behind the clouds were dimmer than those not obscured.

Continuing my developments in TerraGen4, I've been investigating models further. So I created the Darkened Forest.

It is made up of two varieties of trees, of varying heights and distributions. The sun is behind the hill on which the forest stands, with very little light making its way in. Where it does, shadows are cast. The blue sky and huge sun rarely penetrating the sense woodland.

Tools: TerraGen4, GIMP

I said I would use DeviantArt to show my learning of TerraGen - so expect rough renders to be fairly normal for a while.

Today I wanted to look at creating Sun-rays behind clouds. So I've done precisely nothing on environmental lighting. This may have contributed to the blue being pixelated in places. Or I need to further improve the sharpness of the rays.

* Panned mostly above the land so I could focus only on the sky. I didn't want to work on the landscape because that would take longer than the thing I was trying to learn!
* Added a basic 2D cloud layer. Again no point for this exercise in having time spent on realism of clouds
* Made clouds darker/denser to improve visual contrast with the sun
* Fully concealed the sun behind the cloud, intentionally
* Almost nothing done with GIMP, just a little smoothing to counteract pixellation of the sky

Anyway there you have it. The sun's rays bursting from behind a cloud on blue sky. Lesson learned, but *definitely* needs refining!