One more with a larger expanse of landscape.I have also attached a cropped part to show the detail as this was reduced in size for the forum.

2 different images with hugely contrasting colour tones.The first is predominantly gold,red and purple,the second greens and blues.
The first image has a lot of layers for the grass to try and build up a sense of density and heavyness of windblown grass.
The second has less layering and a lot more transparency between the layers to get a more lighter feel to the vegetation.

I also added some sublte red tones to the sky in the first image to reflect the colours of the golden grass below.

Mostly,for post processing, I use entourage elements which can be plants bought from Dosch etc or rendered out from 3d vegetation in a 3d program such as Thea.I also use a lot of elements from photos,particularly grasses and trees.In the last 24 hours we have had tremendous winds in the south east of Ireland and I spent yesterday evening taking photos on my i-phone of wind-blown grass which I will edit and add to in photoshop.

Sometimes I use elements taken from multiple photos.In this instance I seperated out some of the foreground trees from an image but couldnt get a pure alpha channel so I used the multiply blend in photoshop which removes the light background.
(This will only really work in non photo-realistic images)

I then overlayed some additional branches and trees, and , using a dark brush,painted on some additional branches and cloned some additional leaves.Similarly,the stone wall was extended and additional elements added.
Some detail can be lost,but the nature of NPR means you can put down any discrepencies to "Artistic licence"!

As I said before,these images become more matte painting than renders but I would always use a rendered image(modeled in sketchup of course!) to start.

To break this image down you have the following:

1.sky and background mountains
2.trees in front of mountains
3.trees to the left in middle/far background;stone wall behind building
4.Building
5.Foreground in front of building
6.trees behind stone wall(seperate to number 3)
7.stone wall
8.vegetation on stone wall
9.grass in front of stone wall
10.foreground trees
11.birds
12.colour tones

All of these are seperate elements and,as you come forward,would normally contain about 4 layers per step.

A different view of the building previously uploaded in the Summer dusk post.This time,the view is further back in trees to try and create a more wild overgrown landscape.As before ,the building was originally rendered in Maxwell a while back.Like most of my images this has been reduced in size for the forum but the original is twice the size.

Solo,

Unfortunately not, as it would be quite expensive,more so in time than in money, to go to the States.
Is there any chance that a European/UK basecamp can be arranged(Looking at the Olympics its obvious that the brits can organise events extremly well!)

I was originally set up to do a Sketchup publication showing the workflow for my images,but work has been so intensive over the last few months,I haven't had the time.While I have continued to upload images,these have been quite quick in turn-around using some shorthand techniques that I have developed.I dont want to show something piece-meal, but rather a full start to end project including the lighting for the render,composition and colour toning and I don't want to upload that until I am totally happy.

The other thing I would say is that the more I do these type of post-processed images,the more I find myself veering to the vegetation and sky ,and the less emphasis the building has.I would be the first to say that a lot of my images are more matte painting than renders but when I did an image starting with a sky and no building,I had no focus point,no point around which I could start "planting", and found it hard to actually find a theme.I will still do realistic renders(with Thea render,an absolute delight) but these type of images are where I can explore,for want of a better word.

In fact my dream is to render out every building I have worked on and then assemble them in a HUGE panoramic scene,going thru field,mountains,rivers,carparks,roads and ending back up in fields again.

Attached is an NPR of an old scheme I worked on previously.The building was originally rendered in Maxwell a long time ago.There are about 30 layers in photoshop with planting layered and colour tones overlayed,as usual.

The key to doing planting in post processing is to layer and layer and layer.You dont have to worry about keeping crisp edges,particularly in wild planting,as most planting encroaches over its neighbour.Just mix everything up!

I have also attached a cropped area of the image where I increased the red and blue values of the image.You can see that this gives a much warmer feeling.
Similarly if you add blotches of colour in overlay mode and blur the blotch considerably using gaussian blur you can accentuate some areas specifically.I did this in both images but more-so in the cropped image,particularly on the green areas.It really helps to tie the image together and also helps to create the golden colour of evening sun.

Thanks again for the compliments,especially the Freak one,Rich!
Ive attached one more of the same house,rendered out again in Thea,and Photoshoped planting.
This time I was going for a more ominous feeling,as the sun breaks through the clouds just before a heavy downfall.
The barren trees at the back are used to try and help make for a more unsettling feeling,where a heavy dense growth of trees would only soften the effect.

I think the problem lies with the ".3ds format".It has a finite polygon count and if you export ,say for instance,from 3d max,particularly these plants,it can't handle it.
.OBJ has always worked for me.

Thats why I import into Thea.
I cant say enough about this program.I have previously used artlantis,vray and maxwell but for pure ease of use Thea is my default.It has cost me a lot of money over the years,and although I still use vray in sketchup for smaller models,Thea does everything I need to do.

Heres a night time version using the technique I uploaded to the post processing forum a while back.I added a few fireflies to the right to add some bright colour.

The .obj models are brought into Thea and not into Sketchup.
Before you export the models from 3d max you need to ensure that all the materials are standard max materials which means changing them from the vray materials which the models originally have ,otherwise all parts of the models will come through with the same texture.
Once the models are in Thea I add translucency and bump maps and then save them out so they can be used as components/instantces.
Once this is done I open the house Sketchup model in Thea and simply drag and drop the plants.

I have attached 3 more variations of the NPR with different foregrounds and some colour tone revisions.

Cmoreink,I converted thru 3d max to .obj and brought them that way into Thea.You can download a full working 30 days version of 3dmax which will allow you do the same.

Thanks very much for the compliments.The 3d grasses are from HQ GRASS which are available to buy on line.They really help to create evocotive scenes.

The ground on the second image has a procedural reflection with a roughness applied(easy to do in Thea).I then postioned the sun manually to ensure I got the sun reflecting under the seat.The sunlight reflection is quite harsh but I wanted that feeling of strong low evening light burning through the trees.

A variation of the foreground planting and a different stream.I also increased the strength of the sunburst.

A few more thea renders of a garden with different moods.The first 2 renders are of a model downloaded from Ronen Bekermans site.
The final image is an NPR of the house in the last 2 renders.

Its been a while since I uploaded any images to the forum. Attached are a few images of a pier side rendered in thea.I recently moved to Thea and have found it an absolute dream.

Most of the renders were done using the interactive rendering and took about 2 hours each.The trees are Xfrog trees and the ivy is from the free ivy generator software.

A few more from differnt projects

And one more wider view

I recently made the move from Maxwell to Thea,attached are some of my new renders.