"Vale" has been an off and on personal project that I've been working on for a long time. The idea came to me out of nowhere one day and I decided I had to create it.

Nearly everything in the image is 3d. Only a few things like the river and waterfalls are composited from photos. The plants were all created using Onyx. The mountains in the background were displaced in max using hightfield maps created in World Machine. The cliff face with the ruins was poly modeled and displaced.

There is a short "making of" video at the link below which shows some wireframes, A compositing build up of passes and some closeups of the highres final image (1920x1080).

Thanks for viewing and for any comments!

http://www.seraph3d.com/Making_of_Vale_.mov