The Key to Realistic Environments in Blender

foreign realistic environments seems easy when the pros do it but when you try it well you probably know so what do they know that you don't what is the secret to real 3D environments now to answer that question let's first determine the goal of 3D realism which is to fool the viewer into perceiving the image video or game as if it were real by mimicking the properties of light materials and the real world in general so how does this work I want you to have another good look at this photo and take a second to think to yourself what is it I'm seeing the answer is something I realized the other day while taking my dog for a walk and as we were walking along this nicely shaded path in a forest my eyes went over all the greenery around me and then a hidden layers so let's do a little experiment what if I told you that the photo I just showed you isn't actually a photo would you believe that or what about this one is this one real or maybe this one can you actually spot the real image now I was kind of messing with you here because they are actually all fake okay so this goes to show that layers work but what do I mean by layers think of a hamburger individually each layer of a burger is great but only when they come together do you get the best flavor this is very similar the layers will create at together and provide the best realist result now I guarantee that this technique works but the proof is in the pudding so I'll prove it to you by building up an environment using three layers to be precise now since I'm using blender 3D I'm using the power of geometry nodes to create this environment as this allows for a flexible and computationally light result in fact I actually use a free Geometry nose powered add-on by graswald called G scatter which allows me to do all of this relatively quick and easy the add-on besides being free also comes with a number of free assets with more releasing in the near future but if you want you can also purchase a monthly subscription to grasswalt's ever growing list of production ready nature assets or alternatively you can simply buy each asset individually if you don't want to commit to something monthly the great thing about all of these assets is that they're all scanned together in their natural environment which means they all blend together and this really helps in adding realism the truth is you can absolutely do all of this without using the add-on building custom geometry notes setups that would do all of the work for you but why would you this add-on is free to use and comes with free assets and makes this a lot easier and saves you a bunch of time so I don't see why you wouldn't use that and that's why I'm using G scatter throughout this entire video as well as for many of my environment and scenery project Now using layers I'll create a meadow to show you how this works if you did purchase any assets you can add them to the add-on by first selecting an emitter then clicking the asset icon and finally clicking install asset just locate the downloaded assets and voila it works if you're not using grasswall's assets however just select the asset in the outliner first import it and then click scatter selected to scatter those now select your landscape as an emitter choose an asset and click scatter selected set the density to create a generous amount of them and there you have it a real environment is very diverse and therefore you don't just need one type of foliage you need many types Instead This is a rookie mistake that a lot of beginners in Blender make they tend to use for example just one type of grass making everything very homogeneous in how it looks which is very unrealistic compared to True Life For My Scene I'm using all the ones from the be metal ecotope by grasswild so it's pretty easy for me to decide on which assets to use but in your case just make sure you're using enough variation and assets that make sense together you can actually find tons of them both free and paid online to choose what works together in a biome when using these random assets that you found online try and use reference or maybe just get away from your computer and go check out some nature outside try and use different size plants that plants leaves grasses sticks and everything else that belongs in certain environment scattering these different species and assets creates a rich depth of detail which is grounded in reality again reference will be your best friend here this layer forms the base of your environment on top of which the other layers will add additional realism the goal here is to create a diverse biome that feels natural and very by doing that you've wrapped up layer 1 in this journey to achieve realism scattering but don't think you're done just yet because you'll need this next layer to bump up the realism to another level Begin by selecting any of your scatter systems and go to the distribution tab in the add-on gscatter is built using effects and that makes making changes very easy by adding one of the Mask effects you can create a mask that affects the scattering of your assets you can tweak the settings of the effect like for example the color Ram to control how it looks this will have two benefits one it adds realism as plants usually grow in groups if you will and two it removes a bunch of assets from your scene making the entire project lighter on your computer additionally you'll want to do the same thing in the skill tab you can either add a similar effect or even add more variation using a different mask type for the skill so like for example you can use a noise mask for the skill and use the Musgrave mask for the distribution this will add additional Randomness which again adds to the realism an issue I ran into and you'll probably experience as well when adding rocks or trees to your environments is that your scattered plants tend to grow inside of them which isn't exactly real with exceptions of course conveniently there's another effect layer called proximity which can fix just this it's quite simple you set a proximity Target like for example your rock scatter system disable this little option called use pivots only and again it just works you can tweak the curve and the distance multiplier here to control the effect but overall this should be very very simple to do now it's time to do this to all your scatter systems the goal to all of this is to create some much needed variation in size which again adds to the realism as younger plans tend to be smaller grow less around certain objects and overall grow in different speeds depending on Light and Water this is also a great point in the process to check whether your result is matching your reference if things don't match up you might need to hop back to layer 1 and add more types of foliage masking effects and Etc just to get closer to your reference as with everything in this video you'll want to add multiple distribution and skill mask effect do that and layer 2 shapes and sizes will definitely become your best friend in achieving realism now all that's left is the one final layer that's truly a Make It or Break It in making your environments come alive well it is if you're intending on doing an environment animation and if not this layer will at least add another five percent of realism to your images which makes it a must in achieving the most realistic result possible this layer will be the final Edition adding to both the variation in assets and the variation in size and distribution to complete the layer stack and get the best result possible let's take a step back from blender and again compare our reference to our currency what do you think this final layer needs to be similar to the reference essentially what thing is missing here if your answer was movement then you are completely correct the sway of leaves rustling of grass and plants and movement of branches turns even the most accurate representation of an actual 3D environment into something alive so now that we've settled on the fact that you absolutely need movement in your scene how do you go about it now g-scatter has another very simple solution for this which is why we use it in the rotation Tab and it's called a wind effect this will animate your plants or whatever you've scattered to look like there's a wind force in play the great thing here is that this isn't done using a force field inside a blender but instead using geometry notes so there's no simulation needed making this very very light on your computer you'll want to tweak the settings to get a desirable result I like to use a very low speed and strength with a lot of detail which gives enough variation to make individual plants move but keeps their sway subtle if your scene has a lot of wind though make sure to change these settings accordingly now you don't have to set this up for every scatter System since G scatter allows you to create linked effects if you just select another asset in the list click on this icon over here in the rotation Tab and type in w which in this case stands for wind it's automatically going to add that exact same effect to this asset these are all linked so changes affect all systems sharing this effect the goal for layer 3 is to add movement to your assets and make them come alive even in still images this will ensure another layer of variation and detail to summarize we've now created an environment using three layers scattering shapes and sizes and movement respectively these are made up of multiple smaller aspects like species size differentiation proximity masking and wind movement and so combined all these layers create a complete environment true to Nature and give you the key to real 3D environments but I said I'd prove it so here is the final result of my B meta environment using these three exact layers [Music] [Applause] [Music] hmm what do you think did I achieve a realistic environment does it contain enough detail variation and Randomness layered on top of each other to make you believe this image is real I'll let you be the judge of that but I think this absolutely goes to show that layers are the key to realism and that you by learning this principle have given yourself a head start as a 3D artist but there's something else that you'll need to understand about working in 3D that might just make an even bigger difference so check out this video where I'll show you what it is and how you can use it to make your next project more realistic than ever [Music] thank you

Channel: Kaizen Tutorials

Views: 111,170

Keywords: 3d environment blender, 3d environment artist, environment art, environment artist, realistic 3d environment, real 3d environment, blender environment tutorial, blender environment, blender environment design, realistic blender tutorial, realistic blender render

Id: md8mbgTEfIk

Length: 10min 40sec (640 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 28 2023