And this will be the header of the page.

I rendered the castle in bryce--it's the same model as before, just a new angle, a less centered focus.
In fact, I rendered it thrice.
1, I got the textures and general scene lighting
2. I got the faces on which the lightning would cast, as they would be lit (to be an additive layer)
3. I got a mask for dividing the sky from actual objects so I could separate them later.
Also I finally figured out how to get rain accurately. Sad thing is, Rain isn't that visible o.o it's more of an overall haziness that happens to be made of countless BILLIONS of streaks.

I also rendered the text in another 3d instance to get that beautiful golden effect and make it shine like it ought. I did all of the processing in the GIMP. There is a LOT of post-processing here.

that lightning is actually a tendril off the "left forelimb" of a mandelbrot fractal with a white gradient applied, set to an additive layer and duplicated twice (one blurred in the extreme to make it extra GLOOOWY, one blurred just enough to remove posterization), also I applied other lighting tricks. I overused lens flare to an excruciating extent x.x and for that I apologize. Then I put a solid BLACK over it on 'multiply', put the shiny SH logo text on top of it, then gradually lightened the black with gentle strokes of a white brush.

...I think this may be the most badass thing I've ever done with bryce/gimp. o.o