dhama opened this issue on Nov 23, 2007 · 21 posts
dhama posted Fri, 23 November 2007 at 3:18 AM
I hope this is of help to others wishing to create more realistic looking landscapes.
This is not a step by step guide, but a list of tips. One could then just use the tip relevent to their scene, although I think most of them will be relevent.
*1. Landscape scenery using Bryce can be difficult to achieve without at least some outside help, even if it's just to change the ambience level.... but to the other extent using objects created on other apps is not only useful, but helps the scene look more realistic.
Any real live scene has a certain heaviness to it, everything lays correctly and nothing lies stiff or unrelaxed. This can be overlooked when producing a scene.
Try to make your scene look more uneven too, if there are too many objects like trees for instance standing straight, the scene looks unbeleivable. But if you slightly angle trees in different directions they look more natural.
The foreground part of the scene should take up maybe 80% of the building time since it needs to have more detail, take time to perfect this before thinking about a background.
Use more than one terrain. You can copy and alter terrain and texture with different Mats to make the ground look less uniform.
6. Give your scene a purpose, give the eye something to do. Add a main object that will lead the viewer to another part of the scene.
Use 2D planes with images, for say, skies, or just clouds, or any elements that needs to have a more realistic edge to them.
Add in a splash of alternate colour to your scene, like a single flower using a different coloyr from the overal them colour.
If you can, use an art app like Photoshop, Gimp, Painter etc. to add other effects that can make an ok scene look more spectacular. Ambience, Colour boost, Monochrome (this works well in some cases). And if you feel adventurous, painting in more detail. This can be useful if you want to touch up an area that looks less realistic, like a wood texture. You can even use photographs, or part of them at least to super impose over a texture using 'overlay' if your art app has this function.
Last of all, take your time. If you're not happy with a scene, start again. I get through many a scene before i'm happy with one.* **Patience is the final frontier.
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Hope this helps.
If I have any more thoughts on this, i'll post it here. If anyone else would like to add to this, please do, but keep it in the context of landscapes.