Mistwood Chapel, An ancient chapel standing alone amidst nature, whispering tales of old through the morning mist.
This 3D scene features the Urnes Stave Church on a rugged hillside surrounded by rolling hills embraced in mist. A winding path leads up to the church, surrounded by plants and two trees.
The Urnes Stave Church, with its wooden architecture, stands out in the middle, surrounded by greenery. There’s a soft mist rising from the valley, adding a mysterious vibe, and birds flying overhead. Beside the church, there are also a shovel, a pickaxe, and an oil lantern, adding to the scene’s detail.
I first discovered the Urnes Stave Church and was inspired to create a scene around it. While searching for more photos, I found out that one of my favorite artists, William Faucher, had also done a project on this church. I wanted to create something different, blending elements from both his work and the real place, but with my own twist.
I made the entire scene using Blender and textured the church in Adobe Substance Painter. The plants and two trees were created with Blender and SpeedTree. For the landscape, I mixed several texture sets and made a lot of tweaks using Blender’s nodes to achieve a more realistic look.
I set up two different lighting scenarios:
a realistic daytime and a realistic moonlight version. The lighting for the daytime was done with a customized HDRI texture and a volumetric atmosphere. For the moonlight, I used a simple background node with a moonlight color and a few other types of lights. The sky has different textures to match each version’s mood. Then, using Photoshop, I achieved a third, more fantasy look.
Finally I rendered everything with Cycles in Blender.
A special thanks to my best friend, @Martaa , who inspired me to use proper volumetric mist. She also suggested the moonlight lighting, which I hadn’t thought of initially. Her ideas inspired me to make additional changes to the grass colors and apply some color grading in Photoshop for a final touch.
I hope you liked it!
