Good but it looks a little rough around the edges

Lovely. Looks like a wonderful place.

This is amazing and will be finding home on my desktop instantly. This is a dreamland! I love how the left side has a shadow area just for my icons on my Windows 7 laptop. We need more wallpapers like this. I haven't seen this in the loupe for some reason. Keep up good work!

Hmm..I love things made with Vue, but this just feels too fake to me..Don't rate me bad for this comment, that is just my two cents. But keep them coming! :)

For some reason it reminds me of Porco Rosso and Water World.

Awesome :)

I'm curious: does Vue 8 have any DOF settings? It seems as if many of the objects in this picture have an unnatural sharpness to them. It would be good if one could slightly defocus parts of the scene to give a sense of depth...

The quality may be bad, but the scene is wonderful. This is a f'ing dreamland. I'm such a sucker for tree houses and wooden bridges... I wanna live in that house ^^

Thanks guys..I think vue has some kind of dof settings.. Why is the quality bad? It's not a picture..

I just love these digitally created worlds. Thx Richard!

Finally, finally, finally. This looks like it could have been done with a paintbrush. Please, Richard, more, more, more. I absolutely love it.

Beautiful!

For people who are calling this fake: it's not a photograph. It's a digitally-rendered image. And quite nice one at that. A worthy addition to anyone's collection.

It does look a little rough around the edges, IMO. For starters I would recommend scaling down the bushes on the rocks and use more of them (decrease the scale, increase the density). The rocks themselves could use a better back texture. Perhaps experiment with using bump displacement or photographic textures rather than procudurals.

Lastly, I think this scene would benefit from some stronger shadows.

Great composition though. Hope the critique helps. Does InterfaceLIFT allow you to revise the images you post?

I appreciate the effort that went into creating this. However, the rocks seem strewn around haphazardly and it's probably Vue's fault but the lighting is inconsistent as far as harsh sunlight should be displayed (soft in places, harsh in others--aka shadows on rocks versus those made by the rocks). The lack of detail in the leaves is iffy too.

Good fantasy, fine scenery, lacks quality and not a good wallpaper though. But I like it as an idea, definitely would live there ;)

Thanks guys. I don't know about the revise images thing...

I love the cartoon-like feel in this one. Very peaceful, like a window to completely different world. Reminds me of hobbits. Thanks for sharing, this is my current backdrop!

The vegetation looks a little too cloud-like.

Yes of course resubmits are allowed. Use the submission form, enter the exact same title, then email the Jeff so he doesn't overlook it. --luke

Richard, all of your digital paintings have a dreamy, fantasy look to them which is bound to appeal to some people more than others. But there are elements of your style that incline people to be put off by what they see as the "fake" nature of your images. Of course, they rarely point out exactly what it is they find unsatisfactory. So, I have a few suggestions, having seen a number of your pieces over the last few months.

First, they are usually too regular, with a Japanese/English garden sort of perfection to them. In this image, as in some others, the grass seems mown to a relatively uniform height and texture. I was just out this week shooting some springtime photos and, where untended by human hand (or animal grazing), grasses and the various bushes, shrubs and flowers that start up fresh every year are widely various in their height, texture and color. Likewise, trees are wilder and less uniform than you depict them here, again with more color, shape and texture. In this particular image, the trees look to be sculpted as in a topiary garden. In addition, all the rocks are likewise largely uniform in texture and color, something else that is unnatural - and they mostly lean to the right, which also odd. The verges of your roads, paths, trails and streams are regular and unaffected by nature's chaos.

On the one hand you are an excellent technician, having mastered your tools of choice. On the other, I would suggest you spend more time outdoors observing nature, to get a better feel for her variety and disorder. Take a sketch pad with you or even a camera and build a reference file that you can consult when planning a painting. Visit some art galleries and see how other artists have interpreted the natural world around them.

The trick to creating a viable fantasy world is to make it seem real. To do that, you need to get a better handle on the apparent disorder in nature. For instance, why is the movie Avatar so visually impressive? The world it depicts is largely alien - and yet, somehow entirely familiar. Why? Because, however fantastic, it looks real. That reality comes from variety, not uniformity.

In any case, don't let other people's criticism discourage you from painting. That would be the worst possible result.

At first glance this made me think of Pandora from Avatar ;-)

Thanks luke, if I get energetic and redo some stuff I will do that..

Ryan If I knew more this about Vue as you do I'd probably give it a go. It's hard to be real good at using one program when I use several to make walls, not just Vue. But I'm trying..

At the risk of coming off as a troll, I must say that I can't understand all the praise that this rendering is getting. Not that you should stop trying, (or that I could do any better) but this just looks so crude to me; the textures and the sharpness being the most noticeable of its faults. Vue 8 Infinite is a program capable of generating photo-realistic scenes and draw-dropping landscapes, (I think your "Simpler Times" wallpaper was a lot closer to achieving this) whereas "Rocky Road" feels like a rough draft.

whoops *jaw-dropping

Looks REALLY fake but I LOVE the idea!

It doesn't need to look real. It can look like a painting. Or well-placed blotches of colour, fer chrissakes! It's art.

Judge the piece on its own merits, not what the software used to create it is capable of.

It's art. Not everything needs to be a photo or to look photorealistic! Are you going to complain about Monet's paintings because they don't look realistic? Wake up, people, and put down your cameras, already!

Looks really fake!? Sure, and so do these:

http://s.omglog.com/uploads/2009/08/mac-os-x-snow-leopard-wallpapers-The-Great-Wave-off-Kanagawa-by-Katsushika-Hokusai-555x346.jpg

http://-kol.deviantart.com/art/Retro-World-Single-29828213

leave aside 'fake' concerns, the place is definitely very dreamy and calling for journeys. nice work, Richard!

Actually, when I look at this, it looks like painting than a picture (it's not a bad thing!). Thanks for having different pics posted here other than the usual types around here (you know what I mean...).

@ LTD602
Okay, perhaps I didn't explain my problem with the piece very well. My issue with "Rocky Road" is not that it doesn't look photo-realistic, but rather that it lacks cohesion. You must admit that the sky, water and majority of rock textures are all MEANT to mimic reality, while the foliage, tree-houses, etc. have a more dreamy or blotchy look to them. These two conflicting styles cause "Rocky Road" to look neither like a photo, nor a painting, nor harmonious as a work of art.
Monet's paintings look so good because they have a consistent style that is harmonious and pleasing to the eye. You can't just super-impose some building blueprints over top a Monet and call it art (well, I suppose you could, but it wouldn't be GOOD art). There must be some uniformity of style.
You did have one comment, LTD 602, that was not insulting to my intelligence:
"Judge the piece on its own merits, not what the software used to create it is capable of."
A good point. "Rocky Road" does have a nice color palette, is well balanced (if somewhat heavy-handedly), and I like the concept.

This would be awesome for a first-person or third-person role-playing game!