I envisioned this one being the same moon as represented in The Fisherman. As with that piece the gas giant is pretty large in the sky so there just isn't room for rings.

I spent quite a few hours yesterday tearing down this scene and rebuilding it to render faster. After much experimentation I discovered that the real culprit behind the rendering issues was not the clouds or the vegetation. It turns out the "procedural" terrain meshes I used for the atoll itself were to blame.

I replaced them with "standard" terrain meshes and now it seems to render as expected. Unfortunately this also meant redoing the vegetation along the shoreline. The new render won't look exactly like the first version, but I should be able to create multiscreens and maybe even a night/dusk version that will render in a reasonable timeframe.

Render times are becoming a major issue and there are a number of reasons for it. You've correctly noted a number of them (higher resolutions and more details). I think there's more to it though. I think Vue is suffering from increasing bloat and is not using resources efficiently. It also does a terrible job of estimating how long the render has to complete. Vue will do a "preview" render in mere minutes but will churn endlessly when you set it going with production quality settings. The "estimated time" remaining will say 24 hours for days on end.

Given that I have already done all of the work creating a scene that I think will look great I am loathe to stop it halfway (after many hours of wasted rendering) to reconfigure everything (especially when there is no way of knowing whether or not I have made any difference in the render time). Hitting the render button has turned into something of a crapshoot. I really have no idea how long these things will take to finish.

If I dial back the render quality (so they finish sooner) then the dreaded "grain" creeps in that everyone seems to hate. If I dial back the details (clouds, mist, reflections, refractions, etc) then people note derisively that the images look too much like my early work.

I aim to top myself with each and every piece. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. For my part I am disappointed that when I try to use Vue d'Esprit's most interesting features I am punished with these excessive render times.

I would love to have a massive renderfarm to create these, but I have had nothing but trouble sending my scenes to render on the few computers that I have available. Vue's network rendering seems to be more attuned to working with animations (multiple cpus rendering individual frames) than working together on one frame.

I really do like the Vue's output, when it works successfully, but I am starting to question whether or not I can keep using it.

I agree the water does look a bit on the grainy side, and I am to blame. I was rendering this image at Vue's "Superior" render quality but it was simply taking too long. Rather than have you guys wait another 3 weeks I decided to interrupt the image and render the remaining ~30% with a much reduced render quality.

I've tried re-rendering the water with higher settings but for some reason Vue just keeps "processing" and won't even render the first pixel for over 24 hours.

I will keep trying though. Thanks for the feedback!

Strange! I uploaded the 1600 x 900 but it didn't show up until I re-ran my library script. My apologies!