I was inspired by a picture of the Salar de Uyuni that I found as a wallpaper on my Windows login screen.
I thought it would be nice to try and reproduce the feeling of majestic calm that such a scenario can deliver, though I preferred a seaside environment rather than a desert.
I’d love to hear some feedback of any sort!
How I made it
For the realization, my goal was to take the most beauty out of the simplest method: I tried to keep everything procedural (the displacement of the salt loads and the sand are achieved combining various noise and wave textures), but I failed in making a satisfying texture for sand and salt, so I downloaded a seamless texture that I used for both. To model the shape of the sand banks I used a heightmap texture I drew on GIMP with a simple brush.
For the lighting I used an HDRI I downloaded from HDRIHaven.
Rendering with Cycles engine with Optix denoising.
What I like/dislike of my work
WHAT I DISLIKE
- I couldn’t think of a way to make the water ripple next to the sand, or make in any way a more realistic border between the water and sand, I had to bring it out of focus to avoid making it too evident. Any suggestion is very happily welcome
- I still am unable to generate procedural textures with a satisfying level of detail. Any tip on how to make one?
WHAT I LIKE
- The overall result, I mean, how it appears at a glance, despite its simplicity
- The effect of wet sand I managed to create (though I see now I could have done something similar with the salt…)
This is my first post on blenderartists, I hope it meets the requirements of this section, that you’ll want to spend some time sharing some tips and opinions and that sharing my work might be useful to someone!