As I had little to no experience with what was necessary to create a realistic looking outdoor environment, I chose to search the Blender community for tips and tricks on how to get the look I wanted. In doing so, I found a tutorial uploaded by CG Geek on youtube.
In this tutorial, I learnt about many new features and techniques, including:
- Sculpting planes to replicate a terrain.
- Using separate layers to append asset packs into a blender file.
- Using weight painting to add a vertex group for a particle system.
- In-depth information about how to alter a particle system to simulate grass.
- Uploading an HDR for environment lighting.
- Using the node system to alter and layer texture images.
Unfortunately, I did not complete this tutorial in full because despite hoping to work with HDR environment lighting more, I was not happy with the results I was getting. Here are some examples of my best outcomes:
Image 1
With this HDR I felt that it was far too dark. The texture of the bushes began to lose detail, and despite this being rather accurate for the scenario, I did not want this to affect the visibility of my asset textures.
Image 2
This HDR was far too bright for my liking, and although it lit the scene well, it began to look unnatural. I feared that this bright lighting would also cause my textures to lose detail, as the exposure on the leaves was rather high, and as a few of my items were reflective, this did not seem like the best HDR to use.
Image 3
While I liked this image the most, I wanted to use the HDR as an environment, not just lighting, and despite altering the effect multiple time, I could not match the two.
You can view my attempt in the timelapse liked below.
Sources:
– CG Geek (2018). Create a Forest in Blender in 1 Hour.
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtC4-mwPRww [Accessed 27 Apr. 2018].
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