So I’ve been working on my Kinetic Rush project and the overall idea is that office worker is breaking through the glass to escape his boring and depressing life. Eventually he ends up in the forest which represents freedom and joy of the life. The problem is that I don’t know how to set up the forest scene. I don’t want it to be just line of trees that block camera view. If you have any ideas I’d appreciate it.
Hi Artem,
I think your project sounds very interesting! One way to make the scene feel less “closed in” would be to add mountains in the background to give it a sense of scale and to make the world you’ve created seem full and to make the viewer wonder “what’s on the other side?”
As said before, you could also use the scale of other objects to make your character seem small and to make it appear that there is more for your character to explore, far more than there was in his office.
Another way would be to place your scene on the edge of a cliff overlooking a valley with mountains on the other side, again to give the impression that there is a lot for your character to experience.
That’s just my two cents so don’t know if that’s what you’re after.
Good luck!
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in order to avoid a claustrophobic forest, dial down your expectations for forest density. In moist temperate & tropical environments, forests tend to be pretty dense, with the trees packed as closely as possible, resulting in a fully packed canopy and nothing but dark shade at ground level.
By contrast, in drier climates (central Texas (live-oak & juniper), parts of Spain & Portugal (cork-oak & juniper), some parts of east Africa?, parts of Australian outback), lack of moisture results in trees growing farther apart as their root systems are much larger to soak up less moisture from a much larger area. The trees may still be close-packed underground (?), but above ground there is a lot of empty-space between the tree-crowns. Shade is restricted to directly below a given tree, with a lot of sunny grass in between. I’m not sure of the technical name of this type of woodland, but I think of it as “parkland”. IMHO these areas are great for cattle-raising, as there is plenty of grass for the cattle, interspersed with tree-shade for cud-chewing. 
If you set your expectation for the latter, you then will need to model a lot of grassland, interspersed with trees at a much lower-density, with grass density and height decreasing under each tree. This has a pretty easy-to-achieve setup in GeomNodes. Depending on the tree-density settings you choose, it still leads to an invisible horizon (trees in the way in all directions at a distance), but lots of open space in the near-ground view. Sunny, breezy… implicit “freedom!”.
image search for “cork forests in iberia”:
having a harder time finding similar images for texas, but some of these get close:
image search for “texas ‘hill country’ cattle oak juniper forest”:
(Texas ‘hill country’ is the transitional region between the Gulf-of-Mexico lowland plain in SouthEast Texas (moister), and the West Texas plateau highlands (drier). The hill country is the lumpy transition between plains regions at 2 distinctly different altitudes.)
image search for “west queensland outback trees”:
choose your moisture content.
choose your tree density & type.
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Biome type: “mediterranean woodland and shrub”
My vote and personal opinion of breaking out into paradise is a flowering meadow with tree clumps around it.
Environmental bias. I was born and raised in an open desert environment so seeing flowering fields, trees and open water as paradise.
BTW Great looking pre-vis renders to start with.
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I sort-of visualize our “Running Man” running through several different settings in quick succession, and not necessarily with full explanation as to how exactly he goes from one to the next. Maybe he is running down the city street, then suddenly he is in a park, with other people (walking their dogs, etc.) flashing by him in a blur. Then, he’s running up a hill. Then, he’s in a forest. Then …