Good morning Mark,
Thanks for the tips…they were very helpful!
So here’s my try at it after your great help 
This is almost (I say “almost” because we all know you can never have toooo much fun!) too much fun!
Vikki, that last one is just plain beautiful!
Thanks Nikko! 
this one was originally sneaked into the spiderhouse artist challenge thread but as i a) made use of the alpha terrain technique and b) hope to see more alpha-terrain-additions in this thread and wanted to bring it back to the community’s memory i upload it here, too.
hope you like it.
- juandel
i think i’ll never get bored by the shmoove-alpha-move… and hope it’s not boring for you. next pale foggy one: the pass. hope you like it!
- juandel
“awe,” just isn’t sufficient to describe my reaction…
Boring? quite the contrary, every new vista is one that has never been seen before. In fact that is the true worth of Art, it is the ultimate snowflake!
You’ve really created an expansive vista here, it seems to go on for miles on a grand scale.
This is like an image of an ancient land from centuries ago. Less is definately more with this one. This little image does have such a grand scale. 
thank you, my friends 
in tonites session i went for something riverdelta/lake-like
and finally came up with these autumn-colors
i’m not sure if i’ll still like them tomorrow (or even if i do now :D), but as the 2nd was done with adjustment-controls in the render-palette - which i believe to be a zbrush-feature not very much in use - i decided to upload both of them.
- juandel
Beautiful, moody pieces all. Very nice stuff, Juandel!
thank you, Nikko!
ok, another try to inspire ZBs into displaying their terrains here: the first one is a humble and silly multiple tribute to the breathtaking art of stonecutter and aurick (1, 2) - well and of course of impending - (sorry guys 
and thank you so much for the great inspirations you keep spreading here): a few Sunblocked (©robotalk :D) Skydancers (Melacintalarga tropica) frolicking above their amazonian biotop
the second one is a cloudscape based on a fibermade alpha (large draw-size, height about 10, width of brush 100, thickness 3, gravity 0) which turned out completely different than planned (once more! i get used to that surprise-factor but it remains the most funny part of doing the terrains):
hope you like it!
- juandel
Geez these are pretty Juandel.
Juandel, your terrains keep getting more beautiful, if that’s possible. I still love the first one with the birds flying across it, but I am enjoying each new one you come out with. Hope you continue to do more.
Oohh, I missed these new ones Juandel. A big on these. I especialy like the cloud one and the butterfly one. Great colors.
Hey, Juandel! Your vegetation in the first one really looks great. You’ve done an awesome job with the fiber brush. And the second one is a case where the more I look, the more I like it. The puffiness of the clouds is simply amazing. Very realistic landscape, and a great job all around!
thank you, z-friends!
i sure wished anyone else would still add contributions into this thread, so the fact that i am basically doing variations with the same components all the time, would not be so obvious here are two i did recently.
the first one is based on a fiber-aplha, and i used the terrain to play with the depth-cue render-modifier. i wanted to pick out a defined area of the terrain as an eye-catcher but last weekend when i did it, i did not realize the best way would have been to use an alpha… so i was just using the graph and therefore a whole horizontal partition in the lower third became clearer than the rest.
the second one was done today and it became mucho kitsch i upload it anyway, as it might show an alpha-terrain-way to make water to those of you who are interested:
the alpha applied to the plane was achieved in 2 steps:
usually i do water using a fiberbrush-based alpha. this time it was the default simple brush. the left alpha is nothing but a doodle with it. i mrgbzgrabbed it and in the draw palette i changed the height-value to about 15, leaving the width at 100. the grabbed alpha was still active. i painted with the simple brush all over the canvas (if you give this method a try: try to do it more evenly than i did!) and got the right alpha, which was grabbed and applied to a plane the usual way (tool>modifiers>selection>alp) after returning to height 100 in the draw-window. the offset z-value in tool>modifiers>deformations was very low, about 3 or 4 only. selection cleared. some more scaling and rotation (i should have done more to make the far waves appear smaller) and activating the perspective distort in the draw window. voila!
as i did not want another foggy horizon, i created another layer and placed a yellow basic-material-plane in front of the clipping-plane. it was a bit tricky, as the z-offset of the other plane did not allow for a straight horizon, so i tried my best using fog and depth-cue to hide a few waves. the simple brush with zadd-off was applied to the new plane using the left alpha and some greyish colour, then i smudged the sky, using a 100x15 brush again and zadd-off. a few of ed-the-atom’s seagull’s were inserted and the sun was done by placing a point-light. as pointed out in this thread i still do not really know how to achieve satisfying and predictable reflections on water, but i am rather happy with what showed up in here when i did a best-render with environment-scene-fov 45 (i think i could play forever with these features ) and some color-adjustments.
hope you like it, kitsch or not, and find the approach helpful (or come up with better ones and let me know it!)!
- juandel
I am glad you are taking up the slack Juandel, your ingenuity in coming up with new applications of this technique are amazing and lovely. Thanks for carrying on this thread, hopefully I can find some inspiration from these to keep you company.
Man, Juandel, I lOVE that water scene with the gulls! :eek:
Hi juandel,
Great landscapes I particularly like your water and the ingenious alpha created to accomplish it !! You are the landscape Master 
I feel remiss for never having tried Pix’s landscape tutorial - I’ve been creating very little in Z and certainly don’t visit here as often as I would like. I’ve been tinkering with a Halloween image and when done shall perhaps make a . . . . landscape! I’ll certainly study yours before I begin
Regards,
jd
Here we are at page 4 of this wonderful thread, and I haven’t said anything yet! My reason, aside from being lost in wonderment at all the different and unique variations displayed here, is that I have a secret agenda…having done a load of these type of terrains in Bryce, ( 
), I was fascinated to see how the same technique would show in my favourite software…
I think you can guess my final impressions…
You guys have all exceeded my wildest expectations, and have revived my interest in these ‘landscape’ deals…who knows? I might even have to do one to see for myself!
Thanks to everybody for a experience!
Just noted my posting pushed this thread over the edge into page 5…glad I could help!