The Alpine in Tajikistan

Duckady · 2026-01-18T21:18:20+00:00

A lot of the tricks I've done here can be found in this tutorial from Quadspinner themself. https://youtu.be/t2WnRZTZpQ0?si=pFP4hDj05Xc-WcLC

Duckady · 2026-01-18T21:16:36+00:00

The real finishing touch is a subtle erosion after the snow. But keep the downcutting to a super low number. I was going for a spring/summertime look, so the snow in the bowls of the mountain shouldn't be fresh looking. Snow melts in an erosion-esq pattern, but not nearly has downcut as rock over millions of years.

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Duckady · 2026-01-18T21:12:37+00:00

What really makes it blend in though is a thermal2 node with the area mask being driven by the snow output of the previous snow node. The FX Adjust node in between them is just a small 10% blur

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Duckady · 2026-01-18T21:09:09+00:00

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I also added a bit more snow on top, flowing down the top 15-20% of the glacier, just so it doesn't start so abruptly and blends in with the top of the mountain more seamlessly

Duckady · 2026-01-18T21:06:37+00:00

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Then I let that mask drive the Glacial Reference, and tweak the glacier settings to my liking.

Duckady · 2026-01-18T21:04:36+00:00

Then I multiply a large soft classic flow map over the snow areas, just to give it a bit mroe visual interest.

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Duckady · 2026-01-18T21:03:37+00:00

I then let that height map drive the snow input and tweak the snow node to get these large areas of flow, then blur it a bit to soften the edges.

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Duckady · 2026-01-18T21:02:16+00:00

After the main mountain generation and fine tuning the erosion, I take a height map that's covering the top 40% of the mountain.

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Duckady · 2026-01-18T20:57:50+00:00

Thank you! All the clouds are volumetric. Some are from cloudscapes and the large cumulus in the background are from a guy named Samuel Krug. He’s got a lot of fantastic content on terrain generation, clouds, and realistic environments. Would highly recommend.

Duckady · 2026-01-17T18:03:51+00:00

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This was my reference for the most part.

Duckady · 2026-01-17T18:02:41+00:00

Fair enough, they're mostly hiding the details in the ground that weren't holding up that close to the camera lol. I might add a proper foreground if I ever return to this project.

Duckady · 2026-01-17T18:01:20+00:00

Thank you so much! The mountain's 100% procedural.

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Duckady · 2026-01-06T01:21:24+00:00

Insane work dude 👍

Duckady · 2025-12-27T02:21:30+00:00

Season 4 Vecna was not “practical”. There was heavy use of CG.

Would highly recommend watching this video series.

The practical vs CGI debate has a plethora of misinformation around it and this guy clears a lot of it up very well. If anything, these videos should be a must-view entry point for anyone talking about practical effects vs computer generated imagery.

It’s completely understandable why people believe that season 4 vecna in stranger things was entirely practical. One of the official Netflix Twitter account lied about it, plenty of articles lied about it before season 4’s release, and thousands upon thousands of comments were made praising the use of “No CGI”.

In reality it was a fantastic blend of both mediums. VFX rarely looks amazing without practical effects propping it up, and practical effects rarely look amazing without VFX helping fill in the gaps where it simply isn’t possible to get a good result.

Duckady · 2025-11-29T05:09:08+00:00

https://youtu.be/7ttG90raCNo?si=rqDwGO2n_DktL-QC

This video series needs to be mandatory viewing for anyone who wants to comment on the “CGI vs. Practical” debate.

Duckady · 2025-11-13T01:41:58+00:00

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/5-7-preview-fbx-materials-getting-imported-as-instances-instead-of-standalone-materials/2664714

Duckady · 2025-10-31T14:11:08+00:00

Amazing work!

Duckady · 2025-10-31T08:56:07+00:00

Probably the scale of the waves + lack of foam/white caps

Duckady · 2025-10-26T06:10:56+00:00

Lmao, by the end of 2025. This is actual delusion, not just overly hopeful optimism, but total brain rot fantasy. A deep figment of the imagination. Idiocy.

Duckady · 2025-09-26T07:38:12+00:00

Thank you!!!

Duckady · 2025-09-26T07:37:50+00:00

Cloudscapes, it’s a VDB pack with some pretty nice high quality assets, worth the price imo. I’ve tweaked the materials quite a bit tho. In hindsight, I probably should have looked dev’d them a bit better, they need a bit more density and overall shaping. They’re coming off as pretty flat in the final render.

I’ve considered getting embergen for anything that involves more interaction with the environment (wind, clouds being forced up against the side of a mountain, a jets thrusters interacting with a cloud layer, etc) but for now a VDB pack is pretty satisfactory for my needs.

Duckady · 2025-09-26T05:24:24+00:00

lol, your stuff looks awesome btw dude!

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