It looks kind of boring right now, feedback is appreciated!
Are the trees realistic enough?
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I think the tree texture looks weird and the leaves are not realistic, can you show me the leaf shader?
In my opinion, the trees are pretty realistic and you are overall on the right path. However I see a few things happening:
-The bench looks tiny in the picture and is in the shade, which means that it’s a bit hard to notice and the picture seems to have no focus or main point of interest.
-The sunlight attracts the eye exactly in the parts of the image where there is nothing.
-The trees look like they are all the same size. Also, we can see the sky under them, which makes it look like the forest is tiny. That area could use a bit of foliage (though this might also not look good, you would have to try and decide yourself).
-I can’t quite tell if this place is supposed to be more of a wild and natural area or a well maintained garden. If it’s a forest, I would expect many different sizes of trees, as well as rocks, stumps, broken branches and different kinds of grasses, flowers and bushes on the ground. If it’s a garden, I would expect more signs of human presence such as stone paths, hedges, maybe flower beds.
-Finally, a lot of the interest in this scene would come from better image composition, so I would recommend searching for tutorials on this topic.
So these are my suggestions. However, only you know what vision you have for this piece, so don’t hesitate to try different stuff.
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Thanks for the feedback!
I do see this as more of a maintained area, hence no small trees / shrubs / etc… sort of a fancy dog park. The bench is to help show scale of trees, but is a poor focus point for sure.
I featured you on BlenderNation, have a great weekend!
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Hey, that’s a really cool scene!
Maybe it’s lacking a little story? I can imagine that a couple of characters around the bench could build a narrative pretty quickly.
For general enhancement, I suggest you look at the following youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-zfEqMQS88
It seems to be spot-on for your question.
You could also consider adding at least a gradient at the bottom of your trunks. The tiled texture shows a little, and real trees have very complex and patterned bases. I’d either get a 3D scan on the tree on the forefront, or work through procedural shading. If you have the opportunity, concentrating leaves around the end of the branches could also help (looks like there is quite a bit of mass in the center, where real leaves would not get access to light).
If you’re interested to go down the 3D scan route, I’d advise you look at this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdY6T1Uq6L4
Great work!
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Hey, thanks, I appreciate the feedback!
The trees and and tree material are both procedural. I think the pattern you mention might be just the consistent size of the Voronoi texture. I will work on that some more to add different size cells. Texturing a procedurally generated tree is a very tricky process. The goal is to be as good as the photo scanned trees.
I am glad you mentioned the leaf distribution, it seemed off to me, now I know why (however, trees can be pretty weird in nature too).
I was hoping I could stay away from adding anything other than nature, wanted this to be a beautiful photo of a landscape, but it just looks ok
As both a tree lover and procedural lover, I feel you. But as of now, I did not succeed in reproducing the same amount of detail through procedural materials. I think that 2 things are usually lacking:
- A really intricate geometry at the base of the tree and a shader that reacts to it
- A geometry aware shader that changes along the full tree itself. In nature, twigs definitely do not have the same material as the base trunk. And the middle of the trunk is likely very different from the bottom
Sounds like a cool but tedious project
Note that I’m only digressing on the subject, and not criticising your render. It looks stunning as is.
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Also bugs in GN didn’t help 