How to create crystals on a sea bed like this?

[shaili.dewangan (Shaili)]

I am creating a layer of crystals on a sea bed in Blender 3.5. The sea bed would have sand particles and crystals spread on it.

To create crystals on the sea bed, did the following steps:

1. Created multiple particle systems (4 particle system) on the same plane. Used hair setting.
2. For each particle system, used different objects as instance.
3. In weight mode, created different spread for each particle system
4. Material – Used Color Ramp with Glassy BSDF to to give crystal look.
5. Render Engine - Cycles

Requirement

1. From top the layer should look like stars with different coloured emissions spread on a sea bed, and as we move closer, emission stays but crystals start appearing.
2. Sand bed has to be created

Issues faced

1. Unable to get glow and starry effect on the particles. Tried composting, but didn’t get the effect with that also.
2. Crystals (particles) at some places are looking very clustered and shape is distorted.
3. Sand bed : How to add sand particles with different golden or other shades in different areas. Help here also will be appreciated.

Attachments

1. Material Used Screenshot (Same material nodes have been used on all crystal)
   

   

2. Render Image ( Please ignore the background -HDRI image use to get right colors for a sea bed)
   

   

3. Ref Image for the cystals ( though not exact but something similar)
   

   

4. Here’s the blender file for reference:
   Layer 3.0 Crystals _Top View_6616_autosave_12160_autosave.blend (2.1 MB)

[etn249]

You are not getting any glow because the crystals have nothing to reflect. The spot light above the scene has a tiny radius, which means it doesn’t get to appear in reflections. Also, the reference looks like there is a light source right in the middle of the crystals, which your scene doesn’t have. If the light sources did appear in the reflections, you could use the glare node in the compositor and it would work.

Also, your crystals have their surface colored. In most cases, this isn’t realistic, because the color of a glass material should be spread into the volume.

Here is an attempt at doing these things. I don’t know if it’s what you are looking for or if it’s practical, but I thought it would be interesting to try. This is a lot heavier with the volumetric materials, so I had to reduce the number of child particles so it would render. I also disconnected the world texture, because it wasn’t in the file.

crystals_modified.blend (2.1 MB)