Hi, I am Yones Bana from cgrecord team, and this is a making of from my last personal work, Fall travel. In this tutorial I am using 3dsMax and V-ray, also Photoshop for postproduction steps.

First of all adjust the unit setup. I use centimeters in this scene.
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Models that I used in this scene
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Models that I used in this scene
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For environment ground I used Paint Deformation tools in edit poly.
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Note that we need a step in front of the beach.
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Add a turbosmooth modifier to achieve smooth result.
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Vegetation is created by Forest plugin. Because I wanted to show the feeling of autumn I used some orange trees models from Evermotion.
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Create a spline to limit the trees area in top viewport.
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I used Forest for scattering the trees, I added the trees in Geometry rollout.
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To add variety to the trees I used transform rollout in forest parameters.
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I scattered some bushes under the trees.
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Scattering bushes.
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For the rest of the scene I created a new spline.
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I used Forest Pack Pro stones library
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Scattering stones.
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Finally I added some trees in stone areas.
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For the main GI lighting i used DOME and put VrayHDRI map on it.
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I used a nice HDRI from Peter Guthrie.
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To strengthen the intensity of sunlight I used a vraysun exactly in position of sun in HDRI.
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For landscape lights I used photometric lights.
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For interior lights I used vraylight sphere.
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For the wooden houses I used two different materials. First - Dark wood
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For bright wood I blended the dark one and bright one with a mask.
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I corrected the mask map on my model with the uvwmap modifier.
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VRayPhysicalCamera settings.
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VRayPhysicalCamera settings.
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And finally this is my Render setup.
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This is a Raw render.
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Render elements.

Now its time to finalize the image in Photoshop! With some adjustment like levels, curves, color balance, … and use elements with correct blending mode achive to better result.
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For water surface I used Flood plugin. You can download
free demo here. After install the plugin, from filter menue select Flaming pear and Flood.
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In this plugin you can control characteristic of water such as horizon, waviness, blur and etc.
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This is the final image.
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Another version.
I hope you like this tutorial :)
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