The same picture with rain removed and the picture adjusted in Photoshop for levels and desaturated.

Made with Vue 2014.
This has rain and 45% fog. The picture was adjusted in Photoshop for hue and levels.

I just received two books from Amazon:

Light for Visual Artists: Understanding & Using Light in Art & Design by Richard Yot.

and

Digital Painting for the Complete Beginner by Carlyn Beccia

Light for Visual Artists is pretty much what the title says, it explains the use of light in setting up 3D rendering programs. Light is an extremely important concept to understand and I thought I had best find a decent book and make sure that I do understand. While Vue's manual explains how the programs controls are set for lighting and how to manipulate them, it does not explain the best use of lighting. Hence the book.  While I'm still only a short ways into the book it's fairly clear and has numerous good quality pictures for examples. Each chapter ends with a suggested exercise. This is not so much a how to guide as much as it explains what is going on in the natural world, and then leaves it up to you to determine how best to replicate in the computer world.  I was looking for this because I have been trying to replicate scenes others have done and some of my photographs, for instance some alpine and sub-alpine photographs of mine. The sticking point is almost always the lighting, trying to get the lighting as realistic as possible.

I should point out that I previously purchased the book Realism In Vue by Dax Pandhi. Dax Pandhi is an expert on creating realistic pictures using Vue. His book covers many aspects needed in Vue to get the right look, and one of the first things he talks about is light. Dax covers how light works and he explains specifically how to get certain effects accomplished in Vue. I can't reccommend his book highly enough. He also has a DVD on Vue.

I recently purchased a Wacom tablet and pen and it was this purchase that led to the purchase of Digital Painting for the Complete Beginner. I've only given this book a quick glance. I'm hoping this will teach me to better work with computer tools like the tablet and pen so I can better integrate my work. I'd also like to try my hands at creating textures or simply digital paintings. Digital Painting for the Complete Beginner is divided into two sections, the first gives overviews of Photoshop and Painter programs then more detail on setup and it's various tools. The second part is composed of tutorials that show you the nuts and bolts of digital painting.

I hope to give more in depth reviews at a later date.

One of my hobbies is computer graphic art. My tool is Vue 2014, a 3D landscape rendering program:
http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/vue_2014_complete/
World Machine, a tool for creating or manipulation terrains:
http://www.world-machine.com/
I also use Photoshop and Corel Painter Lite.

Until today I've been using Google + to put my work online, talk about problems, features or new books I've bought. But my Google+ account is a mish mash of everything I post, pictures I've taken, pictures I've created. I decided I wanted to put all my graphic work, questions and reviews in one spot for easy reference for myself. I will link to these articles here at Google +.