Sophie Rowson [B]

To add a fire simulation to my scene, I took advice from the following tutorial uploaded by Blender Guru.

I had worked with fire in Blender only once before, but I chose to try and create my own fire simulation to see how far I could get on my own. The below image was created by me with the help of Blender forums, and I thought it looked rather convincing.

Despite my satisfaction, I chose to watch Blender Guru’s tutorial anyway, and I am so happy I did. The tutorial introduced elements I had not encountered beforehand, and they helped add to the realism of this simulation. After following the tutorial, my fire looked like this:

Instead of adding the textures to my individual assets, I chose to append each of the assets into a mock-up (shown in previous posts) and add the textures to that. By doing this, I was then able to keep each asset in the same position, only needing to alter their location slightly where needed, such as to fit the displacement of the environment’s floor.

After adding the textures to my mockup, I was left with the following outcome:

What I noticed in this export was that the textures I applied to my lantern’s bulb did not look as I had hoped. To fix this, I followed the following tutorial on how to replicate acrylic glass in Blender, applying this method to my bulb.

This tutorial allowed me to gain the following output:

I then appended this file into my environment file. Once scaling and moving the objects into place, I then focused in on each specific asset, ensuring their interaction with the surroundings looked natural. The following image is the final layout of my project:

During the creation of my Lantern, I was able to find a few helpful tutorials specific to creating this piece. While I did not follow these tutorials exactly, I was able to gain ideas on how I could approach this task in different ways, and even apply these methods to both current and future projects.

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.

 

As I was attaching my exported imaged textures to the corresponding meshes in Blender, I noticed that they were not ringing true to how I had painted them in Substance Painter. My metals were coming out black, my fabric was faded, and they just looked bland overall. After consulting the community and searching through forums, I was unable to find an answer.

I posted these images on my university course page, asking for advice, and while people replied with suggestions, none of them seemed to clear the error.

After many trials and reading many advice columns, I was able to find the source of the problem. In looking at the texture nodes of these items, I realised I had made a mistake, failing to change some of my image textures from ‘Color’ to ‘Non-color’ data, which affected the final pieces greatly. After ensuring my node system looks as it does below, I was able to continue with this project.

 

To test this, I appended my Tinned Food into my final environment, and this is how it looked: