I’ve been trying out Blender’s sculpt and texture paint tools finally. In this one I learned a bit about using particle hair too.
Not too much to this one, sculpted the hill and added a slight displacement map to give it some extra variation. Used the texture paint tool to create a stencil between dirt and grass textures. The stencil was also used for particle density/length. Finally the background is a sky photo I downloaded on-line.
Edit: In case you are wondering this scene had 400,000 blades of grass. (4,000 parent strands plus 100 children each.)
Okay, this is really nice. It looks fairly simple, and it looks like you put a lot of effort into it.
However, the grass is looking a little too reflective and quite bright. Also, and this is just totally my opinion, I think the shadows shouldn’t be so dark, seeing is how the lighting you have indicates that there’s a bright sky. The sky texture is throwing me off a little bit, as there’s not really a visible horizon, that may just be the angle you have the camera. I would suggest a sky like the one you had before, but one that shows visual depth.
it does look good but, on lighting, i think you need to pay more attention. the sky looks overly bright compared to the terrain so, i would either make the sky dimmer or the shadows brighter…
Okay I went back to a plane for the sky and downloaded another texture from cgtextures.com that I think more accurately reflects the lighting and adds a bit of depth. I also dimmed the spot lamp a bit and lowered the specular intensity on the grass by about 50%.
Looking better! It looks a lot more “in depth” XD The only thing that really stands out is that the hill looks waaay too dark for the sky. Try brightening up the colors of the grass and not make them so saturated and contrasted. Once again, just my opinion, but I hope it helps.
Edit: Also, try a slightly yellow lighting for sun. + try using that sky texture for the world rather than putting it on a plane.
Righteo so I brightened up the the main lamp, switched the hemi to a spot for proper grass illumination and brightened it. Added a touch of blue ambient light, washed out the specular on the grass a bit and lowered the hardness by a… hair (pun intended :eyebrowlift:)
XD Of course, ;D Looking really nice! I applaud you for working with hair particles and having a strong enough computer, I really do. And, I hope I’m not giving you too much to do, but…
I don’t think your lighting is matching the direction of the sun, based off of your sky texture. Try using a hemi in front of the hill and pointing it above the hill, or, if you need an example and I explained that totally wrong:
Okay I took your suggestion and also increased the intensity of the darkside lamp. I left the dark side lamp as a spot, when I use a hemi all of the grassy areas on the dark side appear as one solid green splotch. By the by you’re certainly not giving me too much to do, I try to keep myself open to suggestions.
Hmmm nice to see how this has evolved and it’s looking pretty lush so far… I like the intense colours of the grass and sky but i agree about the lighting not quite matching the environment. I like to use area lights for outdoor scenes - you could create one for your daylight with the same blue tint, position and rotate it a fraction underneath your skyplane and increase it’s size in the light properties to cover the whole scene. Area lamps look better the more you inscrease their size as its softens the light and shadows.
That’s quite a compliment from your sis there Kiwi, much appreciated. Thank you everybody for the advice I think I can chalk this learning experience up to a success!
@paul1980: I think I’m probably finished with this work for now, but that is a good suggestion and I will certainly take note of that for future projects. I haven’t really used area lights yet and will definitely need to get some experience with them under my belt at some point in the future.
looks at result