Raining Rubies and Sapphires

So, having a little look at my fellow rookies entries (which are all looking very good), I have realised I perhaps jumped the gun a little! It appears I should have spent some time blocking out my scene instead of jumping straight into the detail with textures. So I decided to take a step back and reassess what I want to showcase, which is the correct procedure of creating a scene (not necessarily how good it looks). Although as an aspiring artist I want my work to look great, I appreciate that will come with time by following the correct procedures and processes. 

So please see below my attempt to block out the scene without any significant detail. Generally I am happy with the layout of the assets and I cannot foresee any significant changes to their position, or the addition of similar sized assets to the scene, either. Going forward I will look to add more detail to all the assets and produce some smaller assets for a camp, smaller ruins, bushes and plants.  Please note I will provide more details about my airship in separate post.

Yesterday I spent some time working on my tree, which is what I want to be the focal point of my scene. I wanted the tree to sit on top of a gemstone rock, with its' roots wrapped around the rock and the tips submerged into the ruby river. I was able to sculpt the tree by using the snake hook, draw and crease brushes. For the rock I was able to create it from a cylinder,  where I added some edge loops and scaled them differently in places. In terms of the texture, I used the same texture as the cave walls for both the tree and rock. However I increased the scale of voronoi texture in the tree and changed the colour, so it looked more blue than red. For the rock I did the opposite by reducing the scale of the voronoi texture but left the colour as is. Once I initially finished the model I realised it needed to be longer, so I retrospectively increased the size of the rock and roots. Overall, really happy with this look and I believe this asset is ready for the final model. 

I have been knocking up some ideas of what I want the scene to actually look like, now with the help of the ideas and techniques. The images below are part of my previs process, helping me better understand what I want the final look to be. I I carried out this process by playing around with different colours and assets. I previously wanted mountains made from the gemstone material I used in the caves, but after the concept landscape I created I wasn't convinced it looked that great. So in these images, the mountains share the same texture at the large ruins, I've just change the colour slightly. In some cases it does look like the emery rock I referenced in an earlier post. I do however think I need to develop this further by looking at more suitable textures perhaps?  I created the blue grass by using a hair particle system, which I actually like. I do however think I need to model some plants and grass strands, and then apply that as the particle system. I also sculpted a tree which turned out okay! I do think it needs to be at the centre of the model, I'll look how to encompass  that. I'm thinking a stand alone tree in the middle of the ruby river, on a large gemstone rock with the roots submerged in the liquid rubies. The idea would be how the tree gets it's power I mentioned in an earlier post.

Today I knocked up some concept models for my large structures. Influenced heavily by the Mayan and Cambodian temples I referenced in my first post, I wanted to create huge structures made from rock, covered in vegetation like moss and vines. The structures themselves I created by blocking out the basic shapes, subdividing, adding supporting edge loops. I then gave the meshes a Musgrave texture, with a mix shader and displacement nodes. The node set-up can be adopted in many circumstances. I found it by researching typical node set-ups for concrete (I just played with the colours in this case). In turn, I got the rocky material which appears to be covered in moss and I am very happy with how it looks. I can also use the same node set up to recreate my emery rock idea with a few minor adjustments. I then stumbled across this very useful Blender add-on, vine generator. This add-on allows you to generate vines very quickly. I found this tool really effective and it has streamlined the whole process. In terms of the vines material, I used a noise texture with a bump node and a colour ramp. I wanted to make the vines more alien and otherworldly, so referred back to the ruby and sapphire idea, making them blue and red. When modelling the bridge, I liked the idea of it being broken, so I used the Boolean modifier to make it seem like a piece is missing.  

Next steps would be to add more detail to the structures, making them look weathered and ancient. I also really want to learn how I can engrave/carve patterns and symbols into the structures, but more research and learning is required here - as I have no idea how to do it, or even where to start looking to find out!

As soon as I posted my entry last night I began to look at different rock formations, such as caves and cliffs with streams and waterfalls. I then dusted off the sketch book and put some pen to paper.  My first concept is a cave featuring gemstone walls, a ruby waterfall and stream, with vines intertwined on the walls. I then thought about how can I create something much bigger and grander, so I looked at landscapes and my search led me to Pintrest. I stumbled across this piece (seen below) of a crystal city posted by Deviant Art and again, I felt inspired to draw something. So in my second sketch I wanted to capture a mountain made from the ruby material I mentioned yesterday, with yes another ruby river (perhaps more a gulf) with a forest .

Right, time to start some actual modelling and posting my own work! I wanted to start by experimenting with the cave concept. I took a cube, deleted some faces and extruded out the remaining edges to create the cave. I then subdivided it, flipped the normals and voila, my caves basic geometry was ready!

I then randomly selected all the faces, extruded them in and scaled them in slightly so they were smaller. Then I applied a material that had a low roughness and gave it some transmission, to give it that ruby look. I then added in a plane, rotated it 90 degrees along the X and scaled it to look like a waterfall. Then I extruded the the bottom edge through the cave to act as the flowing stream of the ruby river. I repeated the transforming process to make it look more like liquid, only difference here was that I randomly selected the vertex's instead and moved them away from the plane. 

Now it's time to start adding more detail and playing around with colours and textures. I did some research into procedural modelling to find the best gemstone textures for the walls and stream. Using the voronoi texture, I was able to create the wall textures you can see above. I also had the node wrangler enabled. I added some vines just using a cylinder with fluorescent bulbs on them. I created the bulbs by using a sphere, giving it an emission then applying a particle system to the cylinders. I wasn't too sure about the colour for the bulbs, so experimented with the two which looked the best, which was yellow and blue. In terms of the walls, I think I've done something wrong as it's definitely not what I thought it what would look like. Will need to revisit my nodes and figure out how to fix it!

Thought as much, had some of my nodes mixed up! Looks much better now. Also, the blue bulbs have won me over! For my render settings I activated ambient occlusion, bloom and screen space reflections. There is also a sunlight aimed at the waterfall. 

Made a few minor tweaks to the model here, in particular the stream. Up until this point the stream shared the same material properties as the walls, so it never really looked right. The ruby stream needed to look, well, more like a ruby stream! In my head, it would have high viscosity - so would be fairly thick. I created a new material and gave it a Musgrave texture instead, reduced the transmission and gave it a slight metallic factor. My favourite part of this update is how the water looks, very happy with the progress. 

Next step is to focus on the the much larger landscape scene I sketched earlier. I wanted to experiment more with the environment and world volumes, recreating an appropriate atmosphere for my planet with some clouds and fog. So nothing fancy here, I sculpted a sphere to make it look like a mountain back drop, then for the body of water and land I used a plane split into two sections. I used the similar material properties for the cave, but I wanted experiment with the liquid and make it seem more realistic, unlike the ruby river flowing through the cave. 

After watching some vids on YouTube I was able to determine what would be the best texture for my world's volume. It was a noise texture at a very low scale. The red-ish/orange hue is created by an orange point light, which I placed just behind the mountains with 5000w of power. Once I was happy with the world volume, I modelled a tree. Here I took a single vert (which I got from deleting all the other verts of a cube) and extruded it into a tree like shape. I then applied a skin modifier, selected the top face of each branch and scaled each face in using proportional editing to achieve the tapered look a tree branch would have. I then applied a particle system to the plane intended for the land using the tree and my forest was created.

Here is the final render of my landscape. I tweaked the mountain material to look more like the cave walls. Generally I am happy with it, however the world volume made it difficult to add much detail far away - like the forest. 

Overall very happy with the two concepts I have created so far.  Moving forward, I will need to develop my vegetation more so it looks more organic and is more focal. I will definitely be using the gemstone materials I used for the rocks in my final piece and will look at how I can recreate the emery texture from post yesterday.  I do really like the ruby river also, so will need to think about I can incorporate that into my final piece also. 

A while back I read about this planet that had clouds made from rubies! That planet can be seen above and is called HAT-P-7b. I have always been intrigued to know what it looks like, so taking a leap of faith I have decided to enter into this competition - taking inspiration from said planet! 

My research has led me to establish that corundum is the mineral which forms ruby and sapphires. I am thinking that I will  look to incorporate a rocky landscape depicting this material, perhaps even a ruby river? We shall see... 

Slight eureka moment when I saw this rock haha! It's a piece of emery, a rock which is formed from corundum! Completely different to what I was looking at before. This shouldn't be too difficult to replicate using some procedural modelling... watch this space!

Some really nice images here of rock formations that I would like to replicate. Monument valley (top photo) is a truly breath-taking location that I was lucky enough to visit some years ago. I like the idea of an underground cave with a waterfall perhaps... a ruby waterfall maybe... 

You don't get much more ancient than the structures referenced above. The first is the Angkor Wat which is a huge temple complex in Cambodia, constructed almost 1,000 years ago! The vegetation in the area has very much taken over, and the roots of trees (yes actual trees) have intertwined themselves around the structure of the complex, making it even more majestic. The last photo is of a Mayan pyramid. Can we really talk about ancient civilization and not mention the Mayans?  The infrastructure left behind by this incredible civilization is almost 3,000 years old and every time I look it I think, how did they do that! Well, I am about to find out (digitally, anyway haha). I'm hoping to recreate similar structures which are huge, made from rock and modular in shape. I like the idea of flipping the Mayan pyramid upside down maybe?

For vegetation I am drawn towards using vines, lots and lots of vines! I also like the idea of trees with red leaves like an Acer. Finally for the grass, I cant stop thinking blue grass will be great. Don't ask me why... it's definitely not because I am Chelsea FC fan... I promise.... 

For the focal point of the vegetation, drawing everything in around it, I want to create a majestic tree that is one of kind. Above is the Arbol del Tule which is known to be the widest tree in the world, found in Mexico. My tree would need to have the same grand characteristics if I want to make it memorable and mesmerizing. Little bit anxious about how it's going to look as  I haven't modelled many trees before and not had much luck (even at low poly) at getting them look great. Fingers crossed this works...