As I was not happy with my first attempt at creating an environment, I, again, headed to the blender community for help. While relying on Blender Guru’s advice heavily throughout this project, I had failed to notice a video he uploaded in 2015 that fitted the scene I hoped to recreate for my assets.
While this tutorial reiterated some parts of the CG Geek tutorial I followed in my first attempt at creating my camp, it gave me new ways of achieving a similar result. In this tutorial, I was introduced to techniques such as:
- Using a gradient and zero strength in weight painting to reduce wasted rendering.
- Using a displacement node to create waves to resemble terrain.
- Importing images as planes to create a background image, as well as affect the shading of the environment.
- Adding more than one lamp to create realistic outdoor lighting.
- Adding a basic volumetric system.
Creating my floor:
The beginning of this tutorial showed me how to add grass, displace a plane, and add a ground texture to create a basic looking field. Initially, I chose to use a lighter dirt texture, but as you can see in image 3 and 4 of the below gallery, the darker image added a more realistic effect, making the field look less dry.
Altering the lighting:
During this tutorial, I was advised to use an image plane to cast a shadow, however, I found it difficult to follow this technique without creating a dark and gloomy scene, so in the end, I chose to remove this effect.
Adding a Sky:
To add the sky, I simply imported another image plane and moved it to the back of my work, ensuring it lined up with the camera. I eventually experimented different background images but found that none of them fit my scene as much as the one provided by Blender Guru.
Altering my grass particles:
After learning about how to manipulate the particle systems I had put in place, I experimented with the thickness of the grass until I gained the desired effect. I also introduced some different strands into this piece in order to create the naturally uneven effect fields in real life have.
Adding foliage:
To finish off this piece, I added some foliage to surround where my assets would sit. This helped to both add detail to the scene and create the perfect place to insert my models without them seeming out of place.
Something I realised during this process was how much of the plane was being hidden by this foliage. Because there was no need for these particles to be here, as they can not be seen, I chose to erase the weight painting below, ensuring that everything beyond where the scene will be placed has zero effect, reducing unnecessary rendering.
As I followed the tutorial, I was constantly changing items and altering values to achieve my final output. All of this can be seen in the following timelapse of my attempt at creating this environment.
Leave a comment