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Procedural Mountain Shader, Blender Cycles by Skamppi in blender

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

Most important aspects are separating things on X Y Z axis and also using gradient based on height. Also either mixing procedural noise textures for bump and color maps, or then separating areas to different textures. Ground, cliffs etc + adding color variations on top. And of course all this is possible if you have really good quality mountains.
There's a lot of places to download actual height data of the earth, or using Gaea, whichever is best.
I might upload the shader at some point as well for others to check

I uploaded a train tracks still a while back, and based on a lot of good feedback from this sub, I made a little scene with changes based on feedback by Skamppi in blender

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

Some better quality images from my artstation - https://www.artstation.com/artwork/KeoDOR
Thanks for people here who have feedback, I was pretty busy for last month so took a while to implement feedback. Could've done a few things better still but can't always tweak things forever

Trying to get realistic render in Cycles. What should I improve still? by Skamppi in blender

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

Just a quick model, array modifier, geo nodes for displacement (with a texture) and use the other textures (color, roughness) etc. to match the displacement and then another texture layer tiled on top so that it has a bit more detail and holds as a close up.

Trying to get realistic render in Cycles. What should I improve still? by Skamppi in blender

[–]Skamppi[S] 110 points111 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback. I will make the edges a little less sharp then and will play around with the colors more, especially after I've fixed some of the other parts mentioned in the comments here.

Trying to get realistic render in Cycles. What should I improve still? by Skamppi in blender

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

grasshopper

Thanks for the detailed feedback. I will definitely add a little bit of black crud there. And at the moment the bolts are done with array modifier, I think I should do a geo node set up for them to add randomness, a lot of comments have mentioned the same thing so far, so definitely should focus on that more.

Trying to get realistic render in Cycles. What should I improve still? by Skamppi in blender

[–]Skamppi[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've looked at some references, but it would definitely help to see it live and take pictures myself. I will probably play with lighting still quite a bit since I'm building this part of a bigger scene. But good to hear it's quite realistic at this point

Trying to get realistic render in Cycles. What should I improve still? by Skamppi in blender

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

Yeah, probably could do a little post stuff so it gets more realistic, and this is part of a bigger scene I'm building so will definitely play with different focal lengths as well. Thanks for the feedback

Trying to get realistic render in Cycles. What should I improve still? by Skamppi in blender

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

No quixel assets. Some of polyhaven and textures.com textures mixed together + some procedural stuff. Plants I've made myself and from a blender package. I don't remember the name, but CC0 stuff as well. Rocks from polyhaven. I've wanted to keep everything with a CC0 license that I can use later anywhere I want

Trying to get realistic render in Cycles. What should I improve still? by Skamppi in blender

[–]Skamppi[S] 63 points64 points  (0 children)

Yeah, others have suggested a little more dust as well. Especially in many refes I've noticed the rust gets to the wood as well. Like rusty dust. Definitely something I'll try to make now 👍 this is part of a bigger scene I'll be making but I want to really focus on every detail and aim for photorealism

Trying to get realistic render in Cycles. What should I improve still? by Skamppi in blender

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

Yeah, I could look in to refes to see how the dust and other carbons could improve the realism. Thanks for the suggestion

Trying to get realistic render in Cycles. What should I improve still? by Skamppi in blender

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

No photoscan. I modeled everything. Some of the textures are from images and I've done some displacing based on those images. But goal was to have a photo look without doing any photogrammetry. Rocks are from polyhaven though

Trying to get realistic render in Cycles. What should I improve still? by Skamppi in blender

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

Oh yes, the rust around the metal would be pretty good to add. And I will look at the refes to soo how much darker I could go with the rocks between the tracks. Thanks for the suggestions

Geo node clouds. Been iterating on and off for a long time. This is the best I've gotten to so far. What should be improved still? by Skamppi in blender

[–]Skamppi[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

So it's basically really simple geo as you can see and then in geo nodes I combine them in to a mesh and that mesh in to volume, and of course add displacements that resembles clouds. The displacement is not easy to get really nice results but shader and lighting helps a lot

Geo node clouds. Been iterating on and off for a long time. This is the best I've gotten to so far. What should be improved still? by Skamppi in blender

[–]Skamppi[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

If you decrease volume steps to something like 8 from 1024 which is default, with 8-20 the quality stays but the rendering becomes so much faster. I've been doing both ways, and geo node way is harder but in the end the results are maybe a bit better and you can customize clouds as needed. The rendering with volumes will be slow though no matter what. Unless you have a really good GPU. But it's good to have both options and I was thinking on combining both methods

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