So lovely and unusual landscape. The sky is wonderful. Great job.

Boy, you're good...coulda' sworn it was a real photo...the only clue was the gallery choice...excellent work, Russ.

Good Work!!!!

I like the way the trees in the foreground are lit up by sunlight... gives the image extra freshness. Maybe the cloudiness could be reduced a little in this scene, especially in the middle, but the mistiness where it hits the trees gives it depth. Lovely work, as always. :-)

Thank you all for the great comments. I appreciate them very much.

The initial layout of the picture is pretty quick, but populating and lighting that stage convincingly can take weeks of fussiness and dozens of small, test renders. I threw away two previous full size renders like the one above because they weren't convincing enough. Those take about 30 hours to render at this detail level. The low-level clouds are useful not only for atmosphere, but to hide defects in the landscape. The trick is to make it look seamless, with nothing out of place, but I'm not there yet. Not by a long shot.

Fantastic work Russ! Looks like the morning we are having here except the trees are covered in snow! We are suppose to get 16 inches of snow tonight! Wow...can't wait to go sledding, build a snowman and drink hot chocolate:)

Is it still free? I think I might have to try it after seeing this.

Thanks for the comments. I'm happy you both liked it.

There may be a free version, I'm not sure. I pre-paid $200 months before the first release several years ago, when it was pretty buggy. This is from about the 3rd or 4th update and it's completely stable now. The trees don't come with Terragen 2 though, but are purchased as digital files, usually in bundles of 10-15 plants at 3 stages of growth. Those files can then be imported into Terragen 2 and distributed across the landscape. Variations in the trees are created through scaling and scattering functions that are easily changeable. Billions of objects can be introduced into a scene this way, each a variation of one master file. The most fascinating part for me is how the digital plants 'grow' together and intertwine like plants do in the real world. The 'seed' that each plant starts from is much more complex that just a cut-out of a tree, like you'd find in Bryce or similar programs.You can get digital plants of all kinds through Xfrog.com

Just be aware that Terragen 2's interface is not intuitive at all and nothing like the original Terragen. But with the right touch, it can make magic.