Epic Landscape Tutorial - In Blender

hello guys and welcome to this video it's been a long time since the last upload and that is due to the fact that i've had the coronavirus and i've just been sick a while back i traveled through asia where i took this photo and i thought let's recreate that in 3d oh wait it's already 3d and that is the landscape that we're going to create in this video i really hope you guys are as excited as i am but nevertheless welcome to another landscape tutorial well guys a lot of you have been waiting for this tutorial and have probably seen my landscape teaser on youtube i am super excited about this tutorial so let's just quickly talk about the content of this video first we're going to talk about inspiration and work process camera movement and focal length how to save memory and keep the scene simple but epic lighting and last but not least the importance of movement in a scene originally i wanted to show you guys how to make this scene however i used mega scans for this scene and these trees which are very heavy for even my computer so in this tutorial we're not going to use any mega scans or assets like that and we're also going to try to keep it as low poly as possible so hopefully everyone can follow along and create some stunning landscapes i always start my work process with a sketch i think it's a great way to get a good overview of your project and which assets you will be needing so i always take notes for example sci-fi buildings rocks cliffs trees and afterwards i try to assemble these assets before i start the project so i knew that i wanted a sci-fi building for the project and to find inspiration for the building i jumped over to pinterest.com where i simply searched for a sci-fi landscape scene i was looking for something simple that i could easily create without a lot of geometry and my search led me to this awesome container sci-fi building i chose this because it's actually quite simple it's mainly made out of three different parts a wireframe a container and a satellite if you combine these three parts you should get an awesome building which shouldn't be that difficult to create so i started by modeling a container which is actually very easy i could also have downloaded the container there are already some great ones out there that are available free the building itself is very simple i just stack the containers and apply a lot of different assets like these very simple ventilation systems i also imported a satellite model and after i was done with the whole building i exported the different parts over to qixel mixer where i did the texturing during the building process i got creative and i just added different elements as i was going for example in the final model i also added in some windows and some different pipes to the ventilation systems as i wasn't quite sure if this building should be close to the camera in the final render i just made sure that all the textures was in 4k so that this was at least an option and there we have our sci-fi building done the grass was very simple it was just a plane that i rotated and gave some geometry then i modeled it using proportional editing and made a lot of different samples so i had some variation since we will be using the grass for our particle system i just selected all the assets pressed m and created a new collection the tree i grabbed over at sketchfab where i found this low poly tree which looked very nice to get some movement in the scene i knew that i wanted some spaceships to fly around my scene so i imported this star wars tie fighter which was perfect in this case and that was basically it for the assets this is our awesome asset team assemble now let's create a landscape so now it's time to open up blender and follow along i usually start by blocking out the scene and that is the first step step 1 blocking out the scene first you want to go under edit under preferences and under add-ons and then you want to enable the landscape add-on so just search for landscape and enable the anc landscape add-on remember to press refresh and close the window if you go under create you should now have a drop down called landscape if you just press landscape it will automatically generate a basic landscape in the landscape drop down we have a lot of different tools to manipulate our terrain we are mainly going to play around with the landscape main and the landscape noise the landscape noise is very important because this is where we really change the look of our terrain before i started this project i was pretty certain of how i wanted my terrain to look so i just played around with the noise until i got the look that i was satisfied with you probably also want to play around with this until you get the result that you like just select the noise that you want press refresh and you'll see the result instantly i ended up using the noise called strata terrain i think this looks great because it has a lot of different levels even though i think the terrain looks awesome by itself i wanted to add some more detail to it so i added in a sub surf modifier and set it to something like two and then i added in a displace modifier press on the icon right from the new button and press new under the type of noise i changed it to clouds under the size i set it to something low this determines the size of the noise right now it looks pretty weird and this is because we need to change the strength of the displacement modifier to something low like 0.03 then you can go back to the noise texture and change the size to get a different result i went for a very small noise texture to get a lot of small bumps for even more detail we can go back into the modifier tab and crank up the subsurface modifier just remember that the more subdivisions you choose to use the harder this will be on your computer i went with something like 3 for the final render but 2 will work just fine as well then you want to press shift a and add in a plane move it to the side jump into edit mode right click and give it some subdivision while remaining in edit mode turn on proportional editing by pressing on the icon or use the shortcut o on the keyboard then simply select the middle vertice and move it up a bit then you want to tap out of edit mode right click and shade smooth then let's give the plane a subset of modifier and leave it like that for now we now want to try to block out our scene this can be a bit tricky if you haven't found a position for your camera yet so i usually start by placing the camera roughly where i think it should be and then i jump back and forth between the camera view and the viewport to block out the scene another very important thing is the focal length if you're really bad at choosing the right focal length this can really destroy a nice render so i'm just quickly going to talk a bit about focal length and hopefully this will help you find the right one for your scene focal length is usually measured in millimeters it is used to describe the distance between the light conversion that is happening inside the lens to the image sensor of the camera body a lower focal length like 24 millimeters will result in a wider field of view a higher number like 50 millimeters or even 200 millimeters will result in a narrow field of view the focal length also determines how large a subject will appear in front of the camera the bigger the focal length like 200 millimeters will result in the subject appearing larger in front of the camera and vice versa with a low focal length this is usually referred to as magnification so when should you use which focal length the very low focal length from 8 to 24 millimeters creates an extremely wide image however this usually also results in a lot of distortion so i will definitely not recommend using these lenses unless you know that you're going for a stylized look or really know what you're doing this sort of image is usually produced by the gopros and it is usually something that you want to remove in post production a 24 to 35 millimeter lens is still a very wide angled lens however you do get rid of a lot of the distortion these lenses are usually used for big landscape photography and guess what we're doing 35 to 70 millimeter lenses are very standard lenses these lenses produce images that are very close to the human eyesight if you're really bad at choosing the right focal length i think a lens in this range will really cover most of your cases 70 millimeters to 300 millimeters also known as telephoto lenses have no distortion in a fisheye way however they have a tendency of flattening out the image the lower range of the telephoto lenses like 85 is a very popular portrait lens also because it doesn't distort any of the facial features in the higher range like 200 to 300 or even higher are usually used for wildlife capturing and they can be very tricky because they are flattening out the image so much that it can be difficult to determine the distance between objects however in a real life scenario they can be necessary to get close enough to the animals so with that in mind i'm going to set my focal length to around 45. i have also created a very basic camera movement for the camera which is just moving forward towards the mountain in the back step 2 materials at the moment everything is just white this is because we haven't added any materials yet so open the folder that i have created for you called materials this folder contains a master material and a grass variation material so select your landscape and under the material tab search for master material and press enter the master material will automatically place rock grass and snow accordingly to the angle of the landscape which will closely mimic nature the master material is fully customizable which means that you can input your own grass material rock material or snow material and furthermore if you enter the note group you can change the amount of rocks and grass and snow in the scene by dragging sliders on the color ramps it's really intuitive so play around with it yourself originally i grabbed this material over at blender swap but that was a long time ago so unfortunately i don't know the name of the creator of this material but it's a very basic standard material and there's a lot of tutorials on youtube on how to create a material like this but thank you so much if you recognize your material now let's add in the grass variation material to the planes that are still white just select the plane and under the material tab drop down just search for the material it's called grass variation let's give it a quick render and see what we got well i think it looks pretty good however i think the mountain is too bumpy i only want the bumps to appear when the mountains turn into rock when there's grass i want it to be more flat and we can fix this very easy select the landscape and go under the modifier tab make sure the displacement is visible because we want to see the result instantly then you want to go under the object data properties and add in a new vertex group let's call it displacement with the landscape still selected tap into edit mode and select all the vertices that you want to be affected by the displacement i only want to select the top of my landscape because that is where the rock will be represented when you're happy with your selection make sure that the displacement vertex group is selected and press assign then you want to jump over to the modifier tab and under the displacement modifier input the vertex group that we have just created called displacement and as you can see now only the top of my landscape is bumpy and rocky which is exactly what i want and if you want to add more bumpy parts you can just select some more vertices and assign them to the vertex group step 3 particle systems let's start by adding some grass to the planes in front of the camera so select the plane go under the particle settings and add in a particle system let's rename it grass plane change the mode from emitter to hair and set the number to around 5000 change it from path to render as collection and choose the grass collection that is in the project enable the object rotation and then the children change the mode from none to interpolated change the display amount and the render amount to 5. right now the grass is too big so change the scale to 0.01 and crank up the scale randomness all the way up to 1. rename the particle system grass done we're just going to add the same particle system to the other planes an easy way to copy a particle system is to select the object that you want to give the particle system then select the object that has the particle system go under the particle system and says copy from active to selected object in this way you automatically transfer all the data you can also select the plane that you want to assign the particle system and under the particle drop down you can just search for the particle system that you want to assign because the grass is so low poly we can go pretty crazy with the amount of grass in our scene without a big sacrifice in our performance however we do not want unnecessary geometry and since the plane is so close to the camera only parts of the plane is visible so tap into edit mode and select only the vertices that are visible for the camera you might want to jump between the camera and the viewport view when you're happy with your selection go over to the object data property and add in a new vertex group rename it grass and assign the vertices that you have selected you then want to tap out of edit mode and go over to the particle tab then you want to add in a new particle system and do the same as you did with the other grass particle systems the only difference is that under the tab called vertex group you're going to add in the vertex group we have just created called grass by doing this the grass will only appear where you did your selection this means that you can also lower the amount of grass on this plane as it doesn't have to cover the whole plane now let's add in some trees select terrain and tap into edit mode go under the object data properties and add in a new vertex group rename it trees for this selection you want to go into the camera viewport by doing this we can see exactly which vertices are visible for the camera view this is very important since we only want trees to appear where they're visible because trees are quite heavy for the computer so we don't want any unnecessary trees then i tap out of edit mode and fill in the gaps when i'm happy with my selection i assign it to the tree vertex group with the plane still selected i go under the particle properties and add in a new particle system i'll change the type from emitter to hair and i'll set the number to around 100. i do this so the computer doesn't crash in the beginning i then change it from path to collection and pick the tree collection that is already in the project i then scroll down to the vertex group drop down and input the vertex group called tree that we created earlier obviously the trees are too big so i'll change the scale to something like 0.01 and crank up the scale randomness a bit now it's time to change the number to something like 2 000. this might be very heavy on your computer but luckily i found these trees that are very low poly so hopefully you'll be able to run this and if we give that a quick render this is what you should have and now you're probably thinking wait we didn't add trees in the foreground but i'm not gonna show you how i did that because it's just the same process and i feel like you should be pretty comfortable applying a particle system to a plane by now so pause the video and get the particle systems done and come back and just to clarify what i did i used the exact same particle system for the mountain trees as for the trees in the foreground the only thing is that i changed the number from 2000 to 400 and with that said you should be good to go step 4 lighting before we start with the lighting you should disable all the particle systems as they will really slow down your work process and then you want to jump over to cycles right now everything is dark and that is because we haven't added in the sky yet so jump over to the world tab and under color select sky texture this will add blender's built-in procedural sky texture and just by default it already looks pretty nice but i'm just quickly going to talk about some of the settings and how you can improve your situation first of all there's the sun size if you increase the sun size it will make the shadows more soft and if you decrease the size it will make them more sharp i'm going to leave my sun size at around 12. i feel like the sun intensity is pretty self-explanatory and i'm just going to leave it by default the sun elevation however is pretty interesting because this really changed the look of your scene if you set the angle to something low like fall it will recreate a sunset if you put it higher like 30 or 40 or something it will represent a midday since i want my scene to look epic i'm gonna pick a sunset setting because let's be honest that is pretty epic so i'm going to leave my angle at full i'm actually quite happy with the direction of the sun as it is hitting the mountain from the side you really don't want to light your subject from the front as this will really flatten out your image so from the side is not a bad idea from behind might result in your scene looking very very dark so i'm just going to leave mine at almost default but i'm going to change it to 8 so i just get a little more light on the mountain i also think the altitude is pretty self-explanatory however if you max it out it gets all black because i guess you're in space and the lower you go the closer to the earth you get since we are in the mountains we do want that blue tint that we get when we get higher in the air so i'm going to change it to 3.5 i'm not going to change the air the dust or the ozone mainly because i never get a good result when i change the settings so i'm just going to leave them by default i am however going to change the strength of this guy by default is set to 1 i'm going to leave mine at 0.2 0.1 to get that dark sunset feeling and that is basically it for the lighting and if you're thinking nah i don't want to play around with this guy texture building and blender you can just go on hdr haven and grab an hdri this is a very easy way to light a scene just pick an hdri that fits your scene and you're good to go step 5 realizing you are better this might sound like a weird step but it's actually true sometimes when you're doing a creative process you just settle for whatever you have created but sometimes you just have to realize that you're better and that you need to push yourself all the time after working on this scene for a while i realized that the angle was boring it's just a dead-on shot on the mountain and it's very flat to look at i knew it would be a lot of work to change the angle but i also knew that it would be totally worth it if i succeeded i wanted the mountain to look bigger so i decided to take a lower angle so that the camera would be looking up at the mountain i also enabled depth of field because you should definitely do that and because we're now so close to the mountain i don't want such a wide angle lens so i changed it to 85 and then i did the boring work of moving the planes back in front of the camera i think this step is a very important lesson a lot of people ask inhubit why does your renders look better than mine and that is because he's willing to walk that extra mile even though he's well known for his lazy tutorials which are very fast tutorials you can be absolutely sure that he spends a lot of time behind the process well i also realized that i thought the noise that i've picked for the mountain looks boring it's just a very plain cloud noise so i thought i would change it so i jumped over to the modifier tab and under the displacement under textures i changed it from blender original to vornoik crackle i think the vonney crackle gives a very erosion-like look as if rain has been pouring down the mountains for years i then changed the scale of the noise to 2.7 and increased the depth to 7. i also changed the strength of the displacement from 0.03 to 0.04 and with these small changes let's give it a render i think it's a huge difference it is impressive what you can change in just 15 minutes and the result it will give you and this just shows that you have to play around with your scene for a while until you get just the right result step 6 clouds and fog under the collection menu we have a collection called cloud box if you enable this you'll get a box that is filled with clouds it's basically just a volume shader with some textures applied to the density if you go into the shading tab you can manipulate this very easy with some very intuitive settings if we jump over to cycles you can see what it's all about it is basically just a box filled with clouds i'm gonna place one on the top of the mountains so that it looks like there are clouds in the sky and then i'm also gonna place some clouds on the trees in the mid ground and i actually think this looks pretty good now let's add in some fog go under the view layer properties and make sure that the denoising data and the missed pass is enabled now if you go under the world tab we have a drop down called mispass if we go into cycles we get the option to press the arrow next to the viewport menus and there is an option called missed pass select that one while remaining in the world tab we can now manipulate the missed pass however we like i'm going to set the start to 0.4 and the depth to 13 but this will vary depending on your scene i'm just going to make sure that the mountains are definitely covered by the fog which looks very nice you then want to jump over to the compositing tab press shift a and add in a denoise node connect it to the corresponding sockets then you want to press shift a and add in a color ramp connect the mist pass to the factory of the color ramp then you want to press shift a and add in a mix node then you want to press shift a again and add in a glare node connect the denoising node to the glare node set the type of layer to fog and set the size to 7. set the mix to 0.2 and connect it to the mix node connect the color amp to the factor of the mix node connect the mix node to the composite node press shift a and add in a lens distortion node and put it between the mix node and the composite output check the box fit in the lens distortion node set the distortion to 0.05 and the chromatic aberration to 0.1 as you can see right now the fog is pretty apparent which is too much in my opinion we can change this by going over to the color ramp and change the pure white to a more grayish color the closer to black the less flock that will appear in the scene and vice versa if it's completely white there will be more in the scene well let's give it a render i think this looks great and we're actually done with the landscape and for still i think this looks pretty good but if we want to make an animation let's add in some sci-fi elements and some movement and that is the last step step 7 movement but before we add in any movement let's add in some cool sci-fi buildings so enable the collection called sci-fi towers and just place them wherever you like i'm going to place three towers one in the front one in the mid ground and one the background this will really help seal the scale of the scene because of relative scale the one furthest in the back will look very small compared to the one in the front in this way we know that there's a long way to the tower in the back and therefore we believe in the scale of the scene now let's add in the tie fighter so enable the tie defender collection and it will appear then press shift a and add in a path rotate the path go into the top view go into edit mode and manipulate the path however you like when you're happy with the way your path is looking select the tie file and go into constraints add in a follow path constraint the target should be the path that you've just created right now the tie fighter is floating all the way up here this is because you have to zero out the location in this way it will snap to the path obviously right now it's too big so scale it down make sure to enable the fixed position and follow curve and now by changing the offset vector we can animate the tie fighter along the path if you want to do this you can go to frame 0 for example hover your mouse over the offset factor and press i this will place a keyframe then you want to move ahead to the end keyframe change the offset factor and press i again now you have a keyframe animation you can right click down on the timeline and set the interpolation mode to linear in this way the tie fighter will move with the same speed all through the animation from here it's basically smooth sailing you can duplicate the tie fighter and change the offset value so it gets a different animation you can also duplicate the path and assign different tie fighters to different paths then you just have to keep going until you're satisfied and even though i only spent an extra 10 minutes on the sci-fi edition i think this looks pretty nice something that doesn't always look that nice however is the camera movement that is where a lot of people lack skill luckily today's sponsor will help you solve that problem louise martin has created this amazing add-on for blender called cinepack cinepage is a huge collection of pre-made fully customizable professional camera moves that are designed to boost your production value and save time it is compatible with all versions of blender since 2.79 it is extremely easy to use however if you have any doubts don't worry there is a 10 minute explainer video guiding you through the installation process and everything and 30 dollars it might seem expensive but really it's a steal because this is an investment in your art because this will improve your game let's take a look at the different presets we have chaotic cinematic extras flyovers pants pulls pushes zooms and there are tons of different variations and even more they are all customizable for this scene i thought a flywheel could be cool and just look we have slow flyover so let's try one of the flyovers i'm gonna start with this slow one so i'm just gonna select the slow flyover and press import and when you look at that it automatically import a camera and a constraint and the whole setup now i can just change the position of the empty and that is where the camera will focus this is absolutely insane a setup like this will usually have taken me a lot of time to create but now i just did it with one click this missile preset is awesome another cool feature is the fact that you can preview the camera movement before you import it if that isn't crazy so if you're interested in this add-on and want to support the channel click on the link in the description and take a look at the add-on thank you so much well guys that was it for this video i hope you enjoyed watching this tutorial and hopefully you learned something drop a like if you feel like it and i'll see you in the next video

Channel: Animatable

Views: 26,764

Rating: 4.966547 out of 5

Keywords: Blender, Animation, landscape, tutorial, epic, photoreal, 3D, moddeling, free, fun, easy, concept, art, cinematic

Id: ZITCNvwoQ0c

Length: 21min 48sec (1308 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 25 2021