My favorite workflow involves blender and zbrush. For one month I was thinking that I was really stupid. Then I found everything easy. Blender is not SU, but now its a real tool to me. I just love it. Just pm to me if you need help. But don't expect tools like push pull, ok there's one like this. There's an optional modeler, "silo", it costs something like 150$, have a try its a great app too.

Using blender for some time, I have this question. Why not to use the internal renderer, its really fast.
There are some tricks importing SU projects in blender, the most important is to convert triangles to real polys. SU uses double sided polys, so textures should be assigned on "white" face not the "blue". Should reassign 2d Alpha transparent pngs too. All these are complicated and difficult.
Exporting 3ds from blender to SU, is very easy though. Blender is a "high end modeler". Do some nice digital sculpts (UV textured), bake and import them to SU.

Thanks gaieus. Its an old post anyway, I know the problem too, so no problem. BTW a very clean 3ds model from blender, SU, even podium loves it. I have a feeling, that SU can handle almost huge amount of models like this. I was trying to crash it and nothing bad happened.

"Still playing with TwilightRender"
But you're playing well. Excellent renders!

Intuos or cintiq or even bamboo. What's the deference? This man knows something about light. Great work!

For Pilou: Do you know how to use zbrush? I paid 600$ for this and I know how to use it. I also have some posts in zbrush forum but you already know this.
Pourquoi tu n'arrêtes pas cette habitude, Pilou? C'est la deuxième fois que tu fais la même chose à mes "posts".

For solo: So you don't need my textured model, just a cone. lol. Nothing to do with September in greek islands, anyway a great render, and I particularly like this model (I don't know how to spell this in english) I've admired in your site. I really had this in mind thinking about a sea scene.

this is for mirjman: thanks for these kind comments. IMO you need to spend some more time near sea. These sea rocks are really floating most of the time. Even whole islands are floating. Even Feidias's statues are floating. Today greek politicians and economists are floating too.
for solo: Pete, there's something I don't understand. I could use jpg too, but SU doc seems to have the same size. What exactly happens there? Even so, we should never use jpg for textures, not really a good choice.
For everybody who doesn't know what a baked model is, please have a look in this UV map. It seems rendered already.

Thanks pete. But what about the UV texture? I tried too and all came to a very smooth mess, nothing like what I was expecting. Rocks seem to be an easy model but it's not like this. I'm trying to model low-polys convincing rock models but haven't found it yet.

This is impressive. This orison is fantastic. Realistic. The sea!
Displacement at sea is really convincing too.
I know pete that you are a kind of magician, but I really need this kind of software , VUE. See how orison looks like. Impressive!.
Thanks for all your kind comments here. If someone wants my SU doc should pm to me, so having the email, can post the 9 mb SU doc. Good luck. Have in mind that this doc is rendered in podium in 40 sec (full quality). )
Less is more. (sometimes)

Thanks sepo and Boofredlay.
About zbrush, the best thing ever happened to me in my sort 3d story lol. If its easy to learn? asdasdfvbxcvbdttymmvb, does this help?
But if you need help, here I am. These guys make this app better and better. And of course out of any logic you can imagine. The model is called tool (!), there's no save (!), you must invert UVs vertically before exporting (!), things like this. Please don't expect something like SU, blender, 3dMAX, maya, xsi, modo, etc.

September in Greece. Time for fishing squids.
Just playing with zbrush. Then this simple scene came in my mind. Baked in blender > rendered with podium. Used my old sea texture, the first I made. Just some PP in gimp, my usual way to adapt the SU fog effect, sea birds, vignette effect. Thats all. Rendered in 40 sec. Full quality noisy presets.

Love it. Nice work.
Bumps look great. BRW does twilight supports normal or displacement maps?

That's it, excellent work pete, but I don't like this smart blur thing. Better be a friend than an enemy. lol But I really don't find this last one render friendly. What's happening in this house anyway?

Hey cosycat, begin a new thread about all this fantastic idea about Hopper. Your work here is excellent too.
Oli I'm afraid that Hitchcock is the Hopper of cinema. Most of film noir actually.
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/
Now, don't you think that SU has something to do with this? This effortless way of doing interiors or exteriors with some cut out people. SU's power IMO.

Merci Malaise, mais malheureusement ces touristes ne sont pas des modèles en 3D

Lights are
"Looks good, except for the three pendant lights; they dont' look natural - more like three 2D white circles."
sRGB problem etc.
How about this if you don't mind? Always a pleasure to PP fine renders.
We're not talking about attachment preview cos SCF discards the color profile.

Does any 3d render has to say anything more against this masterpiece? What a painting! What a render! We discovered America yesterday. But she was always there, waiting... Thanks cosycat for this, thanks pete and eric for this fine post. A challenge, my friends.

I don't want to talk more about color profiles oli. Ça suffit.

Nick275308 welcome. Beautiful render.

Hopper vs Wyeth. You're right oli. Two really great watercolor american masters.