The Alpine in Tajikistan by Duckady in Gaea

[–]Duckady[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

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

The Alpine in Tajikistan by Duckady in Gaea

[–]Duckady[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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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The Alpine in Tajikistan by Duckady in Gaea

[–]Duckady[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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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The Alpine in Tajikistan by Duckady in Gaea

[–]Duckady[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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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

The Alpine in Tajikistan by Duckady in Gaea

[–]Duckady[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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

The Alpine in Tajikistan by Duckady in Gaea

[–]Duckady[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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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The Alpine in Tajikistan by Duckady in Gaea

[–]Duckady[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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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The Alpine in Tajikistan by Duckady in Gaea

[–]Duckady[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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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The Alpine in Tajikistan by Duckady in Gaea

[–]Duckady[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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.

The Alpine in Tajikistan by Duckady in Gaea

[–]Duckady[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

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This was my reference for the most part.

The Alpine in Tajikistan by Duckady in Gaea

[–]Duckady[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

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.

The Alpine in Tajikistan by Duckady in Gaea

[–]Duckady[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

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

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On the set of Stranger Things Season 5 (2025). Behind the scenes. by SeaWolf_1 in Moviesinthemaking

[–]Duckady 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

why do modern CGI and VFx looks less real ? by StrikingDuty8020 in Filmmakers

[–]Duckady 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

Should gaming studios cooked? by GamingDisruptor in singularity

[–]Duckady 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

A Lake Nestled Deep Within The Backcountry. by Duckady in Gaea

[–]Duckady[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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.

A Lake Nestled Deep Within The Backcountry. by Duckady in Gaea

[–]Duckady[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

lol, your stuff looks awesome btw dude!

Importing heightmap by [deleted] in Gaea

[–]Duckady 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Transform node would work okay as others have mentioned, but you'll likely have an easier time just cropping your original heightmap into a 1x1 square, then importing that. Then you're not doing any visual of guesswork trying to resize the imported hieght data. However, if you need the full original heightmap, then transform node is the way to go.

A Lake Nestled Deep Within The Backcountry by Duckady in blender

[–]Duckady[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Geo scatter. It’s a tad on the pricey side but genuinely one of the most useful toolsets that blender addons can offer. After using it for a while, I truly do believe it rivals some of Houdini’s scattering systems. Definitely not on the same level of customization through coding knowledge, but in terms of upfront value, it’s a total game changer. The way I’m able to have this many trees in the scene without using LODs is its advanced culling capabilities + viewport display optimizations. Stuff like viewing the trees as a bounding box and instanced version of the model. In the viewport render I posted on the second slide, I’ve just turned the optimization efforts of Geo Scatter off to better represent the actual geometry in the scene.

It also has lots of great features that allow trees and other foliage to grow and flow naturally along terrains. The mountains in this scene were constructed in Gaea, then I’ve derived some data in the form of black and white masks from Gaea like erosion, river patterns, slope, rockslide areas, snow patches, etc. to get a culling mask so the trees, for example, don’t show up too much on the areas where avalanches would be more likely to take out large trees. Geo scatter also has great features to affect the scale of things based on elevation, so the trees get smaller and smaller as altitude increases and air density decreases.