Ancient Ruin: 3D Enviroment Model
After taking a two-year break, I decided it was finally time to revisit and finish what I had started. This is the completed render from the third project of the Creating 3D Environments in Blender course on Udemy. It’s been great to dive back into this project, though it’s also reminded me of the challenges that led me to pause in the first place. Rendering this scene really pushed my computer to its limits, but the final result was absolutely worth it. There are a number of node setups working behind the scene on this enviroment. Both texture nodes and geometry nodes have been used to create this final render. Working on this has reignited my passion for 3D environment creation, and I’m now excited to move forward with the next chapter of the course and tackle the next project.
Final Render
Final Render (Black and White)
Viewport Display
The main grass scatter setup. This geometry node setup scatters the different grass and plant types across the main terrain object.
This geometry node setup creates the individual grass clumps. There are a few variations of this clump of grass that are later distributed.
This geometry setup is responsible for distributing the background/lower resolution trees. It places proxy tree models in place to give me an idea of the positions while in the viewport to maintain a useable file.
For the leaves on the higher quality trees. This geometry node is used to evenly distribute leaves across all the branches from a group of pre-made leaf/twig models.
For the ruin/building only two main materials were used. One for the brick/plaster of the main building, then one for the slate roof.
Here is a further breakdown/setup of the brick and plaster setup. The placement of the two materials are controlled using vertex painting.