Skies

The sky has been extremely nice to look at recently with so much activity, from jets, storms and sunrises/sunsets to everything in between. One issue that seems to occur quite a bit in renderings is the lack of detail in the sky. This can be an important item to the composition of your work and make it actually "*leap off the page" it is printed on (*ok not actually leap, but you know what I mean if you have ever been in awe over a piece of art and/or artwork).

There are a few sky backgrounds that ship with VIZ/MAX, but you should also consider creating your own, photographing and/or purchasing a few nice images of backgrounds and skies to add to your library of materials. Some interesting sites to take note of for skies include:

http://www.1000skies.com/
http://got3d.com/ - Great site and a great cause I highly recommend it.
http://www.stormvision.com

I have been both creating skies from scratch using Photoshop and now Painter and also using a digital camera to catch those amazing moments when the sky transforms itself to something you can barely believe. If there is enough interest I may post a few up to the Vizdepot downloads section. If you have not been by the site, you should as it is growing bigger and better each week with the hard work of Steven, the staff and people like yourself.

Miker the Biker also posted a nice link to a 360 panorama of Mount Everest. This may take a moment to load as it is a QTVR, but it is worth the wait.

happy rendering...