3D Vegetation in different light situation

Artwork Works in Progress
1

After seeing the renders in https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?443752-New-Canaan-Residence , I gave 3D vegetation another try. But I still can’t get results I find as good as with real photos composited in the 3D render.
Here are my first tries, using the principled shader mixed with translucent as described in the above mentioned thread. Your critic, tips, maybe links to the best 3D trees collections, etc. are welcome.

Some close ups variants with light in the back:

1a


1b

against the light:
2a

2b

2c

from far away:
3a

3b

If you have tips on how to get a good mood with 100% 3D assets, I’ll be happy to give it another try :slight_smile:

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2

These are actually really nice renders. But you can improve two things:

  1. Add some thickness to the leaves and the petals. As seen in picture 1a, they look very very thin.
  2. In the pictures against the light, the twigs appear to be very straight. Give them some curvature and displacement.
    Other than that, there is nothing wrong with these renders.
3

Thanks for the comments.

  1. It depends on how old the leaves are, but leaves are thin at the moment where the tree blossoms. My feeling is more than it what you say in point 2), it’s too perfect, there is not enough randomness in the petals, imperfections in the leaves and wigs.
  2. I just tried with displacement on that tree and couldn’t get realistic results (where the polygons really aren’t visible anymore in close-up) using only the GPU-dedicated memory, even using adaptive displacement. Using 30GB of memory for 1 tree and with adaptive displacement, it would look good, but then it’s impossible for a whole scene with many different trees.
    Maybe I’m doing it wrong? I’m using 3 mesh. One for the trunk, one for the leaves and one for the flowers. They all belong to one group and I instantiate that group.
4

30 gigs of memory for one tree is way too much and it shouldn’t happen. I did a forest scene a while ago with the remarks I mentioned applied and I could render it with 4 gigs.

If the render is not a close up view of a tree, there is no need to add displacement to the twigs. For example in your pictures 3a and 3b, the trees look nice because the viewer has a general view of them, not a detailed view on the twigs.

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