What 3D assets to use for 3D waterfall environment as set extension? Model? HDRI?

Support Compositing and Post Processing
1

Hi, new to Blender. Spent past month non stop learning certain aspects of it. Feeling overwhelmed. I am solo artist (guitarist first) trying to use VFX in a music video. I want to have myself filmed and integrated into 3D scenes.

One scene I have in mind is this:

I am in my hallway at home. I open a door and see a waterfall falling below, and also see off in the distance (mountains maybe). In this case I need good detail of top of waterfall and its immedaite surrounding.

Then camera view wide shot from the waterfall environment of me in my doorway. For this shot since it is wide, I don’t need super detail. But since camera will be doing a push in towards me (though it will never get that close), I need the camera move in 3D space.

At this point I know how to 1) perform camera solve, orient, set origin, set reference solids; 2) build out original scene geometry of my hallway

Now I am trying to figure out how to build these sorts of scenes. I have read about HDRIs, megascans, full 3D models, kitbashing. Not sure where to start, especially doing all this solo and as a beginner. I have found 3D animated models of waterfall environments, but they are 5 million+ vertices and my computer will not handle that well, or I suppose there are methods to handle it in Blender or UE? That is, tell Blender where in the scene high detail is not needed?

Also learning compositing in Blender, but seems I have to solve this problem of building the scene before I seriously think about compositing…

How would you experienced artists go about this?

At the moment I have i7-6700k computer with AMD 480X that is working in Blender using the ZUDA build. But that is of course still very underpowered computer. In about a month I will be building an i9-13900k system with 4090 or similar.

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Please refer to the link below and think about it. (not a simulation)

How to use images

How to use video

Directed lectures included

How to use Addon

3

Thanks for those links. Will check them out. Here is the idea of what I am trying to do for one scene:

This isn’t footage I plan on using. It shows the idea. Camera is first person perspective. At beginning I leave my studio, open door of other room in apartment and through that door I want to have some surreal waterfall environment. When the camera pans down I should see the waterfall cascading far below.

I suppose I can do this via some modeling and compositing. The background of the waterfall can be some matte. Middleground can be some planes with more detailed environment mapped. Then near the door vegation, rock modeling, and then the waterfall. Maybe that can be a camera projected video?

Then next scene will be camera out over the waterfall landscape, some distance away, with me visible on the edge, a wide shot, and for that I suppose just compositing something would work since I won’t need detail as in that shot the background is the main part of the scene.