Please remember to state if your entry is pure, open or non-competing.
“There are two main goals for these contests: Fun and Glory.
Fun: You get only 4 days to create a cool image, based on the theme for the week.
Glory: After 2 days of voting, a winner is declared. The winner picks the theme for next week and will be featured in the Feature Row.”
Uhh… so I may have spent 3 hours working on my entry before I realized I somehow misread ‘Wonderland’ as ‘Wasteland’
I think it will still work with the prompt though.
Deep within an untouched, frozen realm, where time stands still and the air shimmers with ancient magic, lies a hidden sanctuary. Here, crystal blooms rise from the icy waters, said to be born from the tears of the stars themselves. Bathed in the glow of the northern lights, each of them pulses with a quiet, ethereal energy, guarding secrets of a forgotten age. It is a place of wonder and serenity, where dreams are preserved in frost and whispered to those who dare to wander into its enchanted embrace.
Detailed Description
Landscape Creation
The landscape was created using the ANT Landscape add-on and scaled to fit the scene.
A PBR snow texture was applied to the landscape.
Plants from Plant Library and Botaniqa were scattered across the landscape using geometry nodes.
A PBR ice texture was applied to the water plane.
Additional rock assets were manually placed throughout the scene.
Crystals
The crystals were modeled from cubes, shaped into a flower-like structure.
The shader combines a Glass Shader with a high IOR and an Emission Shader, mixed using a Fresnel node as the factor.
Trees
Trees were sourced from Plant Library or Botaniqa. I just picked one from the Asset Browser, but dont really know, which of the Libraries i got.
To create a snowy effect on the trees, I mixed a snow texture into the needle textures using the Z-coordinates of the normals.
Small glowing stars were modeled, given a Base Color and Emission Shader mixed with Fresnel.
The stars were duplicated, recolored, and distributed on the trees via a particle system.
Trees in the background were scattered using geometry nodes, while those in the foreground were manually placed.
Large Crystals in the Background
These were created by editing smaller crystals.
Sky and Northern Lights
The sky uses an HDRI texture, adjusted and scaled for the composition.
The northern lights were created with a VDB volume and a custom shader.
Atmosphere and Effects
A Volume Scatter shader was applied to a surrounding cube to create a misty effect.
Finalization
Different render layers setup in the compositor.
Post-Processing
I have kind of the same Workflow for every fantasy style image i render.
Applied a glare effect with blur and screen layers, integrated using a mask.
Enhanced brightness and contrast with curve adjustments.
Used the Mist Pass as a separate layer to fine-tune effects, such as enhancing fog in specific areas.
Adjusted brightness, contrast, and colors with minor corrections.
Added small particle effects to enhance the overall atmosphere.
As a final step, the image was shown to my wife for feedback before calling it complete.
And here it is.
Wishing you a wonderful holiday season!
Open(ish)- The refrigerator and most of the things in it are modeled, other than a few which are photoscans I made with my phone and then did some clean up in Blender.
I had intended to make it extra gross looking, but I cut back on that after re-reading the prompt.
Pure, cycles.
I got to try the Real Snow add-on.
It took a little while to figure out - the surface had to be close to horizontal, so I had to rotate the trees onto their backs and add snow, rotate them upright again.
Only critique, every time I use it, the add-on creates a new material, even if the properties (coverage, thickness, etc.) are the same. I have 50 snow materials.
Love all the other entries, I will have to study what everyone posted.
