Making Huge Realistic 3D Environments - Blender

Looking at my workflow for the recent 'Gods Valley' 3D environment.
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Lite Mountain Pack:
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Links for this video:
Gaea file:
drive.google.com/file/d/1S_8D...
Free Mountain Asset:
drive.google.com/drive/folder...
Free Cliff Texture Resources:
docs.google.com/document/d/1h...
Blur Node:
drive.google.com/file/d/1GkW1...
Free Rock Brushes:
drive.google.com/drive/folder...
Chapters
00:00 Intro
- Chapter 1 Reference -
03:00 1. Reference
04:20 1. iNaturalist
- Chapter 2 Asset Creation-
06:30 2. Gaea
12:01 2. Simple Building Modeling
15:30 2. SpeedTree
- Chapter 3 Scene Layout -
19:25 3. Shaping Foreground
23:00 3. Placing Monastery
23:05 3. Importing Mountains
24:58 3. HDRI Setup
25:20 3. Atmos Setup
25:55 3. Texturing the Road
26:05 3. Placing the Wall
26:49 3. Cliff Texturing and Sculpting
27:53 3. Last Changes
- Chapter 4 Scattering -
28:22 4. GeoScatter
29:09 4. Manually Scattering First Trees
30:55 4. Misc Tweaks
31:48 4. Adding Own Spruce Tree
33:00 4. Lake Setup
33:20 4. Cliff Trees
34:14 4. Smaller Vegetation
35:05 4. Rock Slides
34:41 4. Foreground Scatter Layers
40:51 4. Foliage on Monastery
41:17 4. Background Scatter Layers
42:17 4. Final Touches
- Chapter 5 Ending Remarks -
43:12 5. Sorry for being slow
45:32 5. Thanks Patrons

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Support the channel and get cool stuff! Get GeoScatter blendermarket.com/products/scatter/?ref=982 Get my Mountains pathtrace.gumroad.com/l/ClassicMountainPack Join the Patreon www.patreon.com/MaartenNauta

[@bUildYT]

Is there a big difference between blenders particle system and this addon? And if so why? Like how can an addon perform better than an build in system??

[@hadi-wicaksono]

how much time you make it. its like a lot of work.

[@hadi-wicaksono]

ah 3 weeks my bad. I'm just amazed and not watch till end. good job bro. i learn a lot about your workflow

[@hadi-wicaksono]

don't be sorry its very cool video.

[@atharvamohite1461]

hello friend , i have been doing 3d animation since 6 months now and this is the best video that shows what are the steps of making realistic animations . thanku so much . i really learnt a lot .

[@Hannibal3217]

This is amazing. I have been amazing by 3D environment for a long time and finally having someone who can show and teach, from start to end is really great. Thank you =)

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks! Hope this show and tell helps a lot ;)

[@aronk3020]

Thanks for all your efforts to make these tutorials! For someone like me with environment background working with other software but starting to use Blender lately this is very informative and fun to watch.

[@HomieOficial]

This is one of the best breakouts i've ever seen! The vibe, the narration, the music, the artwork, everything is great! And the final result is astonishing! I hope you keep doing this. I appreciate all the work you've made. Keep it up

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Glad that you enjoyed all the work put into this :D

[@danielklos8087]

Great content! Thanks for sharing your workflow. Looking forward to see some more.

[@momentum_animation_studio]

Amazing job documenting your process and sharing it! All the work you put into the making of this tutorial really shows. Thank you!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks for the kind words and I'm super happy you enjoyed the video!!!

[@CallistoPili]

absolutely a fantastic render and quality of materials. A video really worth to watch!

[@MartinKlekner]

Whoa, this is breathtaking! Can't wait to watch this one, amazing job on the environment!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks! Good to see you here Martin :D

[@MartinKlekner]

@@Maarten-Nauta You got yourself a follower 🙂

[@levelheaded447]

Great video I learned LOADS of cool stuff. That plant by region site is an amazing resource!! Look forward to seeing what else you come up with and congrats on the thesis!

[@greentokyo]

This is mindblowing! Amazing work!

[@quinn4160]

Your work is so awesome! You're truly an inspiration. Best of luck with your thesis :)

[@iceseic]

What a treat looking at professional at work!

[@stache_obj]

dayyyuummm! that was a journey all right! just finished watching the whole thing and i just gotta say, can't even fathom the effort that would have taken to put it all together. appreciate you sharing the whole process. feels like i learned a lot. like a lot! so thank you!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks, glad you made it all the way through! Its definitely quite a chore haha.

[@Jham3D]

This is awesome. Thanks for sharing bro 💚

[@GambrixPL]

great work! really quality stuff

[@SanOcelotl]

Love to see you grow, very inspiring for me, keep it up

[@eloiart]

Absolute perfection, you are so talented !

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks so much, but I can improve lots, and ill share it when I do ofcourse ;)

[@St3ve_]

I live near the Monte Cervino in Italy and when I saw you rendering for the first time I thought you took a photo of it. The amount of details is insane!

[@hungvominh2490]

Awesome! You make the best long, in-depth tutorials about environment in Blender!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks I'm glad I fill that gap here on KZbin!!! Hope my future content is just as informative/entertaining 😁😁

[@cashoyboy]

final product looks amazing

[@Kurmeloinen]

Thoroughly enjoying your videos! There's the technical side which is very, very interesting to see - and then the nuggets of gold where you explain some of the logic and reveal the general mindset behind the choices with assets and what gets scattered where etc. Nature is so interesting and I love to see when someone replicates that beauty. So, thanks for sacrificing your night sleep I guess, and congrats on the thesis!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks a lot! Hope my future videos will explain everything a bit more thoroughly. This project was very ambitious so something smaller but more polished might be up next :D

[@Kurmeloinen]

@@Maarten-Nauta More specific videos sound awesome. Love to also see these epic scale start-to-finish videos, especially for ridiculously large projects like this.. I get it's absolute nightmare to produce tho 😅

[@ScraggyDogg]

Many thanks for sharing for free, Its a LOT of work, Ilove making environments also, and a bit new to blender, cant wait to upgrade my RAM to be able to do larger scenes. Thanks for all the tips.

[@affinity3d]

a new blender genius emerges in the youtube world, thank you for sharing this your workflow is really inspiring and I took many great tips from this. Please, don't stop that skillshare sponsor is right around the corner

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks a lot, and I hope so haha would be nice to have a sponsor :D

[@steviemcclintock155]

Awesome stuff man, keep up the great work. Love Learning everyday 💙

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks so much for the motivation 🧡

[@EhsanDabbaghi]

Thank you for sharing it... Love it!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Bruh I look sweaty in the intro hahaha. Thats what I get for recording while my pc is rendering. Btw if at some points I sound like im falling asleep in the middle of my narration, A lot of this video was recorded deep in the night after spending all day on college so now you know ;)

[@nihilusedit1447]

Love those "workflow videos" more than step by step tutorial, because I think what will makes the difference between a good artist and a pro is how you can use all tool efficiently, where do you place your time, what is important what is not, and I love the attention to the details by the way in a world where everyone want a good result faster and faster without really paying attention to the details, where the final artwork is just a bunch of shapes and can't be observed deeply, so good job bro !

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks a lot! And yes this is exactly what I aim to show with my videos! Really good breakdown of my intentions 😁😁

[@amankala5680]

love your work

[@TylerTraverse]

Totally gorgeous work! So jealous. Great taste in music too, I wish I could listen to all the songs haha

[@karnivorousgaming]

Fantastic video man and good luck on your thesis results

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks, really hope I pass. Business definitely isn't my strongsuit so we'll see 🥴🥴

[@karnivorousgaming]

@@Maarten-Nauta Yeah haha idk if business is the one man. You're already a professional level artist. Still good to finish what you started tho

[@persscans]

Great Tutorial! thanks for sharing :)

[@USBEN.]

Really enjoyed this. Also great music selection :)

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks and yes the songs are all bangers ;)

[@aguy4605]

Just looking at this makes my laptop heat up. Good work!

[@limatfx4251]

Mind blowing work bro. Keep it up 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thaaanks 😁😁

[@Max-oo1xw]

Damn this is really impressive, not only because it looks awesome but also because of the amount of time and energy you put into this. I usually cant spend more than a few days on a project before getting bored or distracted by something else and it is just really impressive to me when people can commit to a project, with irl stuff going on aswell, like you did here. Because of that it would be cool if you could make something like this on a smaller scale but with a more detailed tutorial about ur workflow looks on things like a meadow or trees etc. Keep up the good work and good luck with ur irl stuff u mentioned ;)

[@Maarten-Nauta]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/nYLal2Wuj92irbM Wireframe Workshop is a buddy of mine and he is really good and has videos on smaller projects! Thanks for all the support!

[@dost_Ae]

Amazing ❤

[@Zertox3D]

You are awesome. I have only recently discovered your channel but we have a very similar workflow! I still learnt a few things so thank you for making these! Incredible work! Good luck with your Thesis!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks so much! I actually watched your recent short film and it was amazing. So incredibly clean and amazing art director backing all you technical skills. So this comment means a lot 😁😁

[@Zertox3D]

@@Maarten-Nauta AH no way! Thank you so much you're gunna make me cry. I hope we get to work together one day!

[@Zertox3D]

@@Maarten-Nauta Also, I say 'similar workflow'.. your dedication to learning speed tree and knowledge of vegetation is mind blowing to me haha! Wayy beyond me. Great stuff

[@deepmusic2456]

Awesome bro......your work

[@atharvalangote8258]

Hey this was amazing! Learned a lot of new things. I would love to have a dedicated course teaching entire workflow or may be youtube tutorial playlist.

[@settledownboo]

thanks teacher!

[@emretoruk7067]

good job, thanks!

[@Brown3D]

More Sick Environment tutorial😍,Thank you bro for giving a inspiration for me to make a 3d Landscape🤗

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks, goodluck on your environment ;)

[@Brown3D]

​@@Maarten-Nautaaiy right man,however i did it with my low spec computer but i happy with that and also get lot of fire when i watch your video❤

[@studiozealot]

"I just want to give a sh*t-" Me too, man, me too. 😂 These videos are great! Your teaching style is very approachable, even just at the hobbyist level. I've always loved looking at and drawing pretty landscapes, and the idea of creating a photorealistic one from scratch is super appealing. Keep it up! I'll definitely consider that mountain pack and these add-ons if I end up diving deeper.

[@esprit9119]

I live in Lugano, Switzerland. You have to visit those places for real, they are amazing!

[@Shakhz3d]

nice work,

[@ifroxxx1226]

This should have a million views, amazing content. Also nice to see that you apparently can do things like this without having to spend a fortune on a graphics card since I'm looking to upgrade from my GTX 1060! 🙌 😌

[@mostafaelnajar899]

Amazing 🔥👌

[@ViralLiving]

44:50 bro lmao, made me pause bc i was like "what, i am lmao" except im doing school, but still, great video, awesome project my guy, keep it up!

[@MK973S]

Magnifique !

[@michaelironstone]

Spectacular...

[@sgmazawi]

Wow!!! Very very Good work !!!!! Can make a Tutorial for an High Archviz ?

[@NoamElyasim]

Outstanding as always. I was wondering how you usually animate trees?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

In this case I used speedtree and exported alembic files which is pretty heavy. Another technique would be using an animated displace modifier on the leaves of tree models but that can look pretty janky depending on how you do it. SpeedTrees wind wizard is really realistic.

[@Meriemferhatl121]

I'm turning 30 and I'm starting to like this blender environement thing.... I know I'm late but I'm gonna enroll into it and try my best to create something similar or at least decent 😅

[@AllExistence]

Instead of parenting to an empty, put house objects into a collection, hide the collection and add collection instance. It will become one objects that you can still edit inside collection, but easy to use and huge boost to performance.

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Smart

[@VinayKumar-vf3sm]

Please make a tutorial on optimizing the scene this will help most of the artists to work on more creative works without even getting worried about hardware. Thank you.

[@manukp302]

Nice😊

[@ahmedshakib3883]

This is fantastic , have you ever used geometry nodes to scatter plants and rocks , small objects .

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Yes, and GeoScatter actually runs partially on Geonodes and their own python programming as far as I know!

[@tplo1]

This looks so much like a bf1 map. Its insane how far ahead that game is

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Yep the Monte Grappa map is insane

[@lastsonofktn]

Sweet

[@MTOcreations]

Incredible work man! How long did that animation take to render? Haha

[@Maarten-Nauta]

I think it was around 10-16 hours. But my PC was pretty shitty at the time.

[@Frigus3D-Art]

I'm pretty shure, those distant trees on the mountains could be also replaced by tapered cylinders for performance reasons and it wouldn't made any difference since every tree gets only a couple of pixels.

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Yep! For my next project I am making LOD versions of my own trees for distant scattering. The viewport was pretty rough in this scene however it did not impact render times as it was all instances. And you do need some level of fidelity on distant trees, as in 4K the small details in translucency/shadows are noticable. But thats ofcourse just going for maximum quality, which youtube compression negates anyways haha.

[@illNPC]

CAME FROM QUIXEL'S REPOST!!! THIS IS AMAZING !!!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks!! Did Quixel repost this tutorial :0

[@illNPC]

@@Maarten-Nauta nope, they actually reposted the render on their insta . I had to search it by myself

[@Maarten-Nauta]

@@illNPC ohhh, well I am glad you found it!

[@AVStudio10]

hey man that was soo awesome, how much time did it take to render the animation on rtx 3060. and can you render a still image for wallpaper.

[@Maarten-Nauta]

6-7 minutes per frame and stills can be found on ArtStation :)

[@yanbr1f1x]

Great Tutorial! Which focal length do you use in most of your scenes? And how much RAM do you have? Because when I try to make something similar to this, I always get problems with amount of polygons in my scene.

[@Maarten-Nauta]

24-70mm. I have 32 gigs of RAM. Normally its the VRAM that bottlenecks tho!

[@caebord6467]

This is so helpful! What was your thesis about?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Glad to hear that :D I'm a business/marketing studen't so my thesis is about using AI and UGC to strengthen small startups and help them compete against big players in various industries!

[@pranjalrathor]

This video deserves soo much more

[@gourijain1750]

Amazing work, can you please make a video on computer or graphic card, which you using it for....😊

[@fish3170]

Only few minutes into the video and loving it. How do you do these work timelapses over long projects? Do you just fire up OBS and end up with a long video you speed up, or do you have so more sophisticated way, maybe less resource hungry?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Literally record my whole process, which can get really slow in the end as OBS lags when I go into the rendered view. Then when editing I go through all the footage to see all the main steps I took, ofcourse I do way more and I endlessly tweak things but for the sake of something understandable I try to just mention each thing once. Then I write a script, narrate it and then take the hours of footage, speed it up and edit it together with the narration. Quiiite a bit of work haha

[@tonnynderitu1504]

🔥🔥

[@teukuaulia4270]

amazing! can u make beginner tutorial for speedtree? that app look great

[@luzid.vision]

Fantastic work. What application do you use to manage your reference-pictures?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

PureRef allll the way

[@gourijain1750]

Amazing 🎉.. can you make video on computer graphics, which you using it.

[@Jo_Edit]

Thanks for alle the insights! I wonder how long it took to render one frame of this (on your setup) 😅

[@Maarten-Nauta]

6-7 minutes per frame on a: 3060ti 6gb VRAM Ryzen 7 3700x 32gb of RAM

[@AVStudio10]

@@Maarten-Nauta 7 mins per frame , 30 frames per second, 210 x 15 sec clip = 3150 mins. / 60 mins = 52 hrs 30 mins.

[@AdrianW3D]

Watched the whole thing from start to fnish and the moss caugt my eye. I can't for the life of me figure out were you got the moss biome pack from. Could you link to it? Anyways amazing process learned a ton!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Sold on Blendermarket.

[@Zertox3D]

1:32 Best use of an AI voice generator I've seen so far lmfao

[@-CornDawg]

Wait, how did you add textures to those sculpted cliffs without retopo or unwrapping?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Box Projection AKA triplanar projection

[@davidvickylov3648]

hi, what kind of program do you use to post reference photos at the beginning of this video? Thanks

[@Maarten-Nauta]

PureRef!

[@davidvickylov3648]

thank you!@@Maarten-Nauta

[@T-FLoWW]

Whats the software you are using to place and resize the reference pictures in reference section?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

PureRef

[@NME10E]

It looks insane! I’m curious, why are most Blender videos I see only 10seconds long? Does it take a long time to render each frame?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

This scene took 6-7 minutes per frame.

[@NME10E]

@@Maarten-Nauta Wow, I wonder how many frames it took. It was well worth it because it looks amazing!

[@oxg7989]

What's the software you use for refrencing

[@bUildYT]

Is there a big difference between blenders particle system and this addon? And if so why? Like how can an addon perform better than an build in system??

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Oke I was gonna respond through comments but I've decided that I'll make a video instead okay, because there's a lot to unwrap :))

[@maxximus8904]

whats the chant in at the start when you show the final animation

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Some chants for the emperor of mankind from WarHammer 40K

[@86abhy]

hey hi I'm facing onr issue while rendering my trees got smudge because of volumetric fog please help me to resolve this issue

[@salmansaleem7910]

brother give tutorials on how to make 3D environment for games such as unity and unreal engine

[@martinicanini6314]

how can i export rivers and trees in blender??

[@aeonbreak4728]

what is that cloud shader you talked about'?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

If you search up "Samuel Krug" you'll find his channel and video on it.

[@reivonyt8696]

39:38 😆 nought nought 😂

[@MasioniPat]

Nice work! Very informative! I would like to purchase the Full Mountain pack, but the link you provided doesn't have the PayPal payment option. Could you tell me how I can pay through PayPal on another website? I live in France and I am unable to make purchases with my credit card.

[@Maarten-Nauta]

I am not 100% sure what payment options there are on ArtStation but I offer it there too: artstn.co/m/OgdBo

[@MasioniPat]

@@Maarten-Nauta Perfect, I'm used to making my purchases on Artstation with the PayPal option. Thank you

[@rajeshawp5684]

Hi, please tell me one thing. I want to create a 40 years old scene of our locality I also have 4-5 photos for refrence and people to talk about how it looked. What things would I need (I am Intermediate in Blender)

[@Maarten-Nauta]

What do you need? You have blender and reference so you can already start right?

[@rajeshawp5684]

​@@Maarten-Nauta Actually when I said Intermediate I was specifically referreing to *modelling*. Now here is the thing If you could answer them I would be really grateful. and I am willing to give this project an year 1. I know nothing about how to make houses and roads look realistic 2. where I can learn the from KZbin 3. and other things you know would be necessary to use to make the town look realistic I can create a city but it would be plain white as I cannot do textures. If you could suggested me where to start learning about texturing and realistic stuff, and do you have some videos about that in your channel (other than the one I am watching)

[@gmilka4283]

Bro is beautiful

[@MK973S]

Did ur Test ur map with Blender VR mode ?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

No I don't own a VR headset sadly

[@metternich05]

This is awesome but why would you go all the trouble making this environment in Blender when you have UE5?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

UE5 isnt any easier. Its its own beast that you have to master. Game engines although rapidly evolving are still weaker (and faster) than Pathtracing. I can use highpoly assets in Blender. In UE5 id have to have assets that are nanite compatible etc. And I'd have to constantly optimize objects that have millions of polygons. Id also have to make LODS and 2D cards for objects like foliage. You can make an environment in UE5 but just because that software has its pros it doesn't make all other software obsolete. Im also very lazy and don't feel like modeling all my assets, then baking all the textures, and then importing all those assets into Quixel and making the materials again. Thats a lot of work too. UE5 itself has its own challenges and I doubt my project would have a shorter runtime using that software over blender. Id probably spend more time on the scene itself but have faster render times in the end.

[@metternich05]

@@Maarten-Nauta Some valid points, I don't mean that with UE5 every other 3D package is out of the business. But one area where UE definitely has the upper hand is environment, and more specifically, foliage. You may not find every piece of foliage you need for your project in the megascans library, but chances are there will something very similar. It's so frustration-free to just pull in assets from quixel with a single click and be done with it. It works out of the box. Yes you need to model your own static assets in an external program, and if you know it's an UE project from start, you don't bother doing complex materials outside of UE. Btw. if you go nanite you don't use LODs, and nanite is probably the future. There's also path tracing, and I'm sure both lumen and path tracer will vastly evolve over the next few major releases. Epic never beats around the bush, all updates are substantial. Anyways, UE is not the only way to go with environment, and there's lots of value in your video, I'm going to follow it and do this project myself in Blender. And if time permits, also in UE, just to see how they really compare.

[@nabarajdebnath2005]

Sir Can you please teach me how to add background clouds.

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Search up Blender OpenVDBs, and if you are referring to the sky those are part of a image that i places im the background

[@nabarajdebnath2005]

@@Maarten-Nauta Thank you sir 😊

[@QuantayPeoples]

What are your CPU, GPU, and RAM specs?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

3060Ti 6GB VRAM Ryzen 7 3700x 32GB RAM DDR4

[@cedasper7310]

homie got that ov chipkaart on his phone

[@Maarten-Nauta]

U know it fam

[@Hyperbole.studio]

what do you think of clarisse?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Cool piece of kit but sadly its discontinued and not available to buy anymore.

[@Hyperbole.studio]

@@Maarten-Nauta do you have discord? I can tell you a hack that I use

[@Hyperbole.studio]

@@Maarten-Nauta i can help you with some stuff on the software

[@Maarten-Nauta]

A hack or just a way to still use clarisse haha

[@deshionews]

Hello sir can you give some closeup tree plz

[@standroads]

can we create this thing using blender, tomorrow I will start it, nothing else, today it late ...

[@anaverageperson9237]

i am trying to make a simple scene and it has about 3.2 million objects while yours shown on the statistics is around 20 thousand how is the foliage managed for the obj count to be so low?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Instancing

[@anaverageperson9237]

@@Maarten-Nauta I did do that though I used " Distribute points on faces" And "instances on points" But my mesh count still increases, is it the wrong way to go about it?.