INTRODUCTION
Howdy, my title is Jukka and I’m from Finland. Earlier than utilizing Blender, I used Wings 3D, Maya, and 3DS Max. I began stepping into 3D by modding completely different video games like Homeworld and Command & Conquer Generals.
INSPIRATION
My inspiration got here principally from Norway, Halo (sport), and Paul Chadeisson’s mega metropolis/ruins artworks. I additionally wished to see how giant of a scene I may create in Blender earlier than working out of reminiscence.
Paul Chadeisson’s mega metropolis/ruins:
PROCESS
There’s a lot to elucidate, however I’ll attempt to hold it quick and easy. Listed here are the hyperlinks to the addons and software program used on this mission.
Addons for blender
TERRAIN
The terrain was in all probability the largest difficulty as I wished lots of element for cliffs and rocky areas. The terrain base was made in Gaea.
After I used to be proud of the leads to Gaea, I began experimenting with scale. I made a decision to make use of real-world scale values inside Blender to make scaling stuff simpler for me. After a couple of days of experimenting, the mountain was scaled to be as excessive as 4000m and 32km large.
DISPLACEMENT AND MATERIALS
There are principally two completely different displacement passes: one for the bottom terrain and one other one for the cliff/rock/element. The terrain base displacement is in a modifier, and the cliff/rock further element is managed by the fabric. A lot of the materials textures are from Megascans.
After the bottom terrain displacement go, there’s some geometry node optimization the place I used some GN nodes from the Erindale Toolkit. Optimizations like digicam culling, subdivision primarily based on distance, and geometry deletion whether it is beneath a selected top.
I do know there’s adaptive subdivision additionally, however I discovered it to be not predictable/controllable sufficient this time. This will get my terrain to have sufficient polygons so cliffs look adequate from a distance.
The principle materials is principally divided into a few completely different supplies: flat floor/rocky slopes/cliffs/seashores/sea backside.
OBJECTS
For object scattering, I used geometry nodes. Thanks once more to the Erindale Toolkit for superior premade nodes that assist with particular features.
For timber, I used the Sapling Tree Generator. There are solely a few fashions used right here, nevertheless it’s sufficient once we add random rotation and scale to them.
I took the rocks from my different mission.
Bunkers and different buildings use my customized displacement maps made in Adobe Designer. These buildings additionally use some easy GN node logic when subdivisions are created. For instance, if the face regular is immediately dealing with away from the digicam, it will not do subdivisions as you’ll be able to’t see them anyway, saving some reminiscence.
For the primary time, I attempted GN ray-casting for deleting timber or rocks the place I’ve roads, pipes, or buildings. This labored higher than I anticipated.
Roads and pipes are generated with curve geometry nodes. They’re fairly easy, however on this paintings, it is greater than sufficient.
Clouds are volumetric. I used noise and sphere gradient for them, which just about did the job. Then I copy-pasted and moved them round till I used to be proud of them. Rendering them took fairly a very long time and was made in a distinct view layer that solely had clouds. Closing changes have been made in Affinity Photograph.
LIGHTING
The lighting is generally generated with the Bodily Starlight and Ambiance addon. Moreover, there’s faux cloud cowl off digicam which gives some variation to shadows and highlights.
Atmospheric haze was added in post-production utilizing the Blender mist go as a masks.
COMPOSITING
The compositing was carried out in three applications. In Blender, I added some glows to the lights.
Base Clouds Haze
I exported my renders as multilayer EXR information to Affinity Photograph, the place many of the changes to clouds have been made and atmospheric haze was added.
All of the render passes collectively
Then, I used Photoshop to make some remaining changes.
BUNKERS
That ought to cowl most of it!
Thanks to your time, I hope you loved studying this text and discovered one thing helpful from it. Have a pleasant day!
Concerning the Artist
Jukka Lehto, an surroundings artist from Finland. Presently working in Cloud Imperium Video games.
