Here are some renderings of my latest landscape rendering in Cycles.
This one is loosely based on the really great tutorial on CG-Cookie.com.
Some of the techniques shown in the tutorial are implented in my scene,
but a lot of things have been done completely different.
For example the distribution of the palm-trees. My version gives the trees a more random orientation.
Plus, i don’t use billboards but real geometry instead.
Another difference are the textures used. Mine aren’t procedural. They are painted directly onto the model.
Todo:
Repaint some of the islands textures at a higher resolution for the beach-closeup.
Refine the underwater Textures surrounding the island a bit
Refine the Compositing nodes (still not comfortable with the new tile-compositor)
Maybe an animation of the scene. Ocean and small waves are already animated.
But i still have so many unfinished projects and so little time
and probably a lot more.
That looks fantastic. The third render especially. A close up like that would be difficult to pull off with billboards.
One thing that’s a little noticeable is the similarity of the trees and the grass. Some variation in height or style of palm trees/ grass would help I think. And the palm tree trunk closest to the camera in the final image is not holding up very well. A normal map might help.
One of the best looking islands I have seen come from this tut! The surrounding beach looks great and has good transition.
If you don’t mind enlightening me, how did you render the trees in cycles? Did your “Leaves” UV’s unwrap automatically for you?
I’d like to use real geometry and Cycles for a landscape project I am working on, but I cannot get Sapling to work for me… Maybe try a pre B-mesh version…
@Consideringthepickle:
Yes the similarity needs to be fixed. Currently it is just one tree I will do some more variations. About 3-4 different trees, each with about 4 color variations. That makes ~12 different trees. After that there should be no more similarity visible.
@Kyle Wilson:
The trees (or better: the tree ) in this scene is not from sapling. until now i had now real use for it, except for very distant trees. For closer views it’s not the right tool at the moment imho.
This tree is from the excellent (but already older) Blender greenhouse. As far as i know those plants were originally created with ngplant. A really great resource for plants and trees.
You can convert those plants for cycles quite easily. You just have to remind that cycles can’t use transparent textures directly yet. So you have to create a b/w alpha map for the leaves to act as a Fac for the diffuse/transparent mix shader.
I redid the whole beach scene from scratch, because whatever i did, the old one just didn’t look natural.
I let the scene render for 1000 passes. Rendertime ~15 min.
It’s looking really good. The sky needs some serious work though.
The shape of the palm tree branches could use more variation too. If you’re going to get any closer than this to those trees too, I think you’ll need a higher quality model. I’d figure out what you want to do with the scene first though and plan accordingly.
There might be an issue with the horizon behind the trees where the blue sky comes through, but it’s probably something a better sky and some atmospheric falloff would fix. Just looks a little off.
What is your lighting setup?
The ocean looks really good. The beach might be a tad overblown. It looks featureless in this last render and I don’t see any shadows from any of the rocks.
I will do some more variations. About 3-4 different trees, each with about 4 color variations. That makes ~12 different trees. After that there should be no more similarity visible.
