Well, im leaving for class in about half an hour, and just pumped out the final rendering of my scene. Its ready to turn in.

Id like to thank jflanglois for the lighting help and for the link for the glowing tutorial, and Jehsup for the tip about scaling textures. Your advice is something that Im going to keep in mind as i work on every model and scene from now on.
I appreciate everyone else's comments, too. Thanks for the advice everyone.

Heres my final rendering:

That is very good. It's definitely come a long way since the beginning. However, the shadows still seem a little chunky, though this might just be 3DS's fault. If I were you, I would look into DAZ Bryce 5 (http://bryce.daz3d.com/). This is the program I use to make scenes just like the ones you have, however it has many advantages over 3DS Max for making this kind of scene. Firstly, it has a tree lab for designing incredibly realistic trees. Its terrain editor is great not only for making mountains and landscape to put into scenes, but also for exporting and putting into your games. Third, the shadows it renders are very realistic. Fourth, you can control reflection/refractivity on any surface, including water, and thus you could make your boat / terrain even more realistic. Finally, you can control the color of lighting much more easily in Bryce than in other programs, especially for this kind of scene (you'll see why if and when you get it).

If you want to pursue this kind of art I would highly recommend this program.