Photoreal 3D Environment Texturing - Blender

We dive deep into texturing techniques for large CG Landscapes.
Consider Supporting the Channel!
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Lite Mountain Pack:
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Gumroad: pathtrace.gumroad.com/
GeoScatter Addon: blendermarket.com/products/sc...
Artstation: www.artstation.com/pathtrace_...
Links for this video:
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...
Render Submission for free Mountain Pack:
forms.gle/b3cJrqy3qhvXs7tZA
Chapters
00:00 - Intro
04:38 - What Are We Making
09:00 - Gaea Masks
11:27 - Adding Mountain in Blender
17:11 - Adding First Textures
21:06 - Time To Bump It Up
24:47 - Mixing Rock Textures
29:02 - Give The Grass Some Love
31:12 - The Blur Node
32:19 - Clumpy Bump
33:49 - Sediment Time
35:31 - Base Snow
36:39 - Displacement Trick
38:57 - Create a Cavity Map
42:40 - Custom Snow/Sediment Mask
51:07 - All The Possibilities
54:18 - Ending Comments

[@Maarten-Nauta]

This was a pretty massive undertaking, hope it helps! Please consider supporting the channel so I can justify spending more time on this channel without having to sell a kidney

[@stego3d]

If you select all the image nodes and switch to box projection while holding the ALT key you will modify all of them at once. This trick works with many things in Blender; rigid bodies, particles etc.

[@Maarten-Nauta]

I use that hotkey all the time yet I didn't think of using it in the shader editor... I feel so stupid now bahahahha

[@Blasphème_Sataniste]

Men, Thank you so much for this trick !

[@SviatoslavPetrov]

Wow! Thanks man! I didn`t know that )

[@HarryReisenleiter]

Thanks for the great tutorial, as well as the beautiful, detailed mountain and textures.

[@mladenperisa]

This is brilliant, a lot of tutorials show you how to do something, but you explain along why you do everything. Amazing, keep at it!

[@MustafaKhan-fs3np]

This is one of the best 3d environment tutorial I have scene on KZbin. Please keep going you are doing Awesome 🔥 and we would also love to see tutorial on making cyberpunk environment.

[@edinspiegel]

Wow! this is amazing! SO MUCH VALUE in this tutorial!

[@mopozuJIko]

Man, you're doing great work! Keep it up! You're dropping tutorials on huge landscapes right at the time when I need them, I've been struggling to get them look good at huge scale, but your advice is godsend!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Awesome to hear that mate! Makes me happy to know I'm helping people achieve their artistic goals :)

[@JakeMMC]

thank you for the information, as someone who uses C4D and vray there is a lot of info that helped me make my landscapes that much more realistic especially when it comes to the gaea part

[@jameshopemusic]

Learned more from your last two videos than the many hours of other environment tutorials. For that reason alone I've just bought the mountain pack to support. Great work!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks so much for the support! And I hope my future videos will be just as insightful!

[@OfflineOffie]

Quick tip: You can select multiple nodes and hold Alt to adjust them all at once! Also works with Image Textures so you can set them to Box Project and adjust the Blend with one click instead of doing it for each one separately!

[@keyvanpfannenschmidt]

thank you for this great tut! lvld up my environment creation process

[@marcrentz]

Couldn´t resist picking up the full mountain pack They look amazing can´t wait to use them. And also your videos are amazing. Always a lot of knowledge and great tips, that will definitely help me on my short film

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks so much for supporting my channel! Glad to help and excited to see your future shortfilm!

[@marcrentz]

@@Maarten-Nauta i´m excited to see where your channel is going in the future. The only way is up ;)

[@fredoster9993]

Merci beaucoup pour cette excellente mise en pratique

[@Lyvethian]

These tutorials are veeery informative and high quality. Keep up the good work!!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks so much!

[@maximusgerardin]

As again this was a really cool tut! Watched the whole thing like it was a cool tv show. Very chill, entertaining, not boring at all and learned some good tips along the way, will definitely subscribe to your patreon

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks so much, that's exactly the vibe im going for :))

[@mmotorheadzzz]

Just phenomenal dude, thank you so much!

[@Amogh_07]

Thank you so much I'm searching this type of video for texturing mountain.

[@jayantbhatt007]

Dude yesterday I saw this render on Dylan's discord group and wanted to ask you for the process and here it is hahaha thanks it is a sick terrain!

[@rehan2141]

great tutorial, it really improved my skills, can't wait to see the next tutorial, thanks ^^

[@rgferreira78]

This is a great tutorial. Thank you.

[@mtscott44]

This was awesome dude, thanks and well done.

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks so much!

[@limedoes3d]

Me and my friends were watching your last tutorial and we realised you explained what you did in the tutorial instead of how you did it and we had some trouble creating a landscape from that tutorial. Please keep this in mind while creating your next tutorial.

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Hi sorry to hear that, my tutorials condens a lot of info into a somewhat digestable video. Sadly I can't explain each button I press, but I do screencast my keys. With basic blender UI knowledge you should be able to follow along and understand what is happening. If you do still struggle keeping up that is understandable but perhaps a tutorial focusing on UI basics would be helpful to follow first. Hope that makes sense :)

[@user-er4pl9fb7x]

I've been waiting for this tutorial since I first saw it

[@quinn4160]

there are some really awesome tips here! Super informative vid and the renders look great :) Thanks!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Glad to hear it was a helpful video!

[@tuqiangzeng9792]

As a C4D user, I intend to learn how to use your theory, because your effect is really good, please continue to work hard.

[@igorkirdeika4765]

I came for c4d and still needs lot to make there and than export to blender cause it was not made with complex scenes in mind... I struggle mostly with a proper Sky and ATM environment solution and with the fact you cannot select a parent hierarchy when you click an object on viewport...😅 but some aspects in Blender are far superior like the node wrangler thing.

[@smortonmedia]

I've been waiting forever for a tutorial like this

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Great tip, thanks for shedding light on that!

[@smortonmedia]

@@Maarten-Nauta thank YOU for shedding light on so much more... bro, seeing the drastic change of cranking the distance up to 35, my jaw literally dropped to the floor. Feel like I've been using the bump node all wrong this whole time haha

[@thorberg2192]

Hey thank you very much for the quality content. Referring to 18:44 min: If you select all your nodes and hold alt while clicking on one projection type menu, you can change the value than to "Box“ and the change will be applied on all textures you selected. This works for a lot of cases in Blender :)

[@thorberg2192]

oh and I see: someone already told you haha

[@KAYOKIIN]

I'm always delighted to learn new ways of doing things from other artists (I've done Martin Klekner and Rob Tuytel's course before). It was great discovering your process, especially the nodes in Gaea! Gaea is lacking good tutorials to harness the full power of its nodes imho, but it's an amazing piece of software. I love to use it. Keep up with the awesome work!!! ;) Shortcut to put a frame around selected nodes in Shader Editor -> Ctrl + J (Maybe you know it by now)

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks for the hotkey, I somehow don't know it yet. Learning a lot from people in the comments so thanks for that!

[@samuelhoppe1528]

This is so good! Thanks!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

No problem!

[@mkfantasy-t8g]

Masking with Gaea is 👌👌

[@eklavyatech8588]

this video solved my lot of problem. thank you for making this tutorial. Please make Detailed tutorial on Gaea how to create textures and properly export it for blender

[@Covingsworth]

Really solid video man!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks legend!

[@tjake2391]

u r my hero ！！！❤❤❤❤

[@PieterHanja]

Thank you!

[@QuirinF]

I can just second what most of the people already said: so much value in this tutorial, filling a lot of gaps for people new to the whole environment topic. I struggle a bit with one thing though and I dont find it mentioned so far. When I try to rebuild the custom snow map out of normal z, I dont get all this normal information from the pbr normal maps, only from the object itself and the information from the displacement map in the material output. This seems logical to me. Yet it looks like you have all this info from the combined normals and bumps and I wonder where it comes from, when this separate XYZ is outside of the shader stream?

[@LcSlXem]

When you export a mesher from GAEA, export it with Raw setting, so you don't have to resize it, just rotate it.

[@designfor3d59]

Man you got me speechless

[@CGDave-hc9nx]

nice work

[@marinprs]

very cool thx!

[@lark_production]

This is a really great tutorial !! The expansive scenes you create are very nice and it was very helpful to know how they are made.😍 I would be happy if I could ask you, How did you learn Gaea? I haven't found a very good tutorial and would appreciate if you could tell me what tutorials or courses you have found helpful.

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Thanks! I learned Gaea by playing around myself and watching @DylanPWN longform videos where he just kinda breaks down unique techniques. But a lot of it is playing around with the program on my spare time!

[@DaniilBarash]

deam thx a lot for advanced content

[@Maarten-Nauta]

No problem bud :)

[@EmpathVisualStudio]

Can you please make a video that specifically goes over how to use the node tree that comes with the pack and how to then copy that into an existing scene? I bought the pack and its super complicated

[@fekkakidriss6562]

S tier tutorial!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@vfxfisher]

Would love to see the Gaea setup

[@dossantos_films]

This extra bump on the texture is a game changer!! Have you tried using with scattershot addon? Did a small test and it seems to work well.

[@Maarten-Nauta]

I haven't used the addon but I have mixed up textures kinda like that, however for the rock in this case I do want it tiled seamlessly because it shows sediment layers which would be stacked on top of eachother and not vertically or anything. But its a great technique for the grass and dirt layers!

[@Nik2ki]

HI! Great tutorial! Thank you for this. May i ask you, where i can find your playlist?)

[@gamerslobyt6680]

Strong video, I got the fire Vfx at my Mac for free also 😂

[@thorberg2192]

Hey, it's me again. Just wanted to say and ask a few things. First, your voice is so calming, and I really like simly watching your tutorials because your very calming charisma and your huge knowlegde. And thanks, the mountain pack I bought is so amazing, I made a lovely shot with it. Btw I set it up for the asset browser - is that something you thought about? I could send back the files. I am really into having a well sorted asset library so everything is in its catalog and comes with an custom rendered preview. And lastly: What do you think of Houdini for creating Height Maps? It's a software which I want to learn anyway. In Houdini you will probably have to do everything from scratch. Allright then, see you :)

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Hey bit late on this sorry. So yeah if I have time I do want to add an assetbrowser for the mountains, although this would take some time with all the LODs haha. Houdini is a wonderful software for 3D, but if you're purely looking for landscapes Gaea is probably the main thingh you'll use even in professional productions. I know a few people that combine Gaea and Houdini. But it depends.

[@thorberg2192]

@@Maarten-Nauta thank you!

[@RoN43wwq]

all image slots empty in blend files in archive

[@cooldude951lol]

Hey really cool tutorial! Could you please link the grass texture you used in this as I'm struggling to find any good quality textures to use. Thanks!

[@aryan680]

Great Tutorial, Thanks for the free content! One question, why aren't we using the obj generated by gaea instead of the height mask since its optimized? I think you have told this in your video, but I am not able to find it

[@mutekkiz7932]

Very useful tutorial, many thanks! Maarten, I wonder if I can like "bake" this entire displacement map to export? Like to use in Unreal with such a details.

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Yes you can but you always lose detail baking depending on the texture size.

[@mutekkiz7932]

@@Maarten-Nauta thank you! But what map should I baking?

[@richod9635]

Will you please do an in depth video showing all the functions and how/when to use them for GeoScatter?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Yeah that sounds like a good video idea!

[@richod9635]

@@Maarten-Nauta I love GeoScatter, however, I'm sure there's a lot of power that I'm not using or don't know that there are function(s) exists.

[@_framehold]

Thanks for such a great tutorial ❤. Btw what's this grass texture. I can't find it online

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Its this texture quixel.com/megascans/home?category=surface&search=grass&assetId=vcjmej0s

[@ranveersinghbaid3841]

Good video Sir please create some more videos

[@brotherstudios7671]

great video! i have been wondering whether i should buy world creator or gaea, do you have any recommendations on which one you think is better?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Gaea 100%, World Creator is good but Gaea gives you 1000% more control and clarity when working. The node based system is maybe scary to look at but so much easier to work with in the end compared to the layers in WC3.

[@jorritdhaenens9687]

hey maarten, for some reason i cant sculpt paint on the improrted .obj heromountain. do you know any fixes to this problem?

[@manjiying7883]

Wow, I want to ask if there is a source project with gaea in the complete package. I think I am very interested.

[@redpillblupill]

1:27 - 😂 new sub just for that joke

[@mr.englishlearner1032]

my project doesn't look like yours :( but this tutorial was awesome and I learned a lot! thanks :) now I gotta learn lighning or camera settings cause mine is looking like ... :/

[@Maarten-Nauta]

You can do it!

[@mr.englishlearner1032]

Thank you very much I uploaded on instagram and with hdri it turned out beyond my expectations. I did it i guess :D@@Maarten-Nauta

[@SanOcelotl]

hey, great video, i have just one question, normally when i use my heightmap from gaea in blender is necesary to shrink a bit the UVs of the plane or the edges will be wrong, do you also did this or how can i make it so there is no need to mess with the uvs?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

I know exactly what you are talking about and I've had to do the same in the past but for this particular heightmap this did not occur. Inside of Gaea I used the 0 borders node a bunch and I also used Normalize instead of Proportional under the build settings. Perhaps this is the fix, honestly didn't even notice that my heightmap didn't have this particular issue until you just mentioned it!

[@SanOcelotl]

@@Maarten-Nauta ohh makes sense, with that node your borders doesn't displace at all, thanks now i get it lol

[@beanbeater]

How do you create the optimized subdivided mesh? The mesh that I get when I use the mesher is very low-res and homogenous. Thanks for these tutorials, I am just getting into gaea, and you make it much easier to create the things I want to make.

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Hmmm, what resolution is your mesher set to, I set it to 2048 or even 3072.

[@samuelhoppe1528]

Keep in mind if you bought Gaea at the Indie tier, the optimized mesh feature is disabled. You can only generate uniform meshes.

[@beanbeater]

@@Maarten-Nauta i figured it out, i wasn't using the optimization at all, i was just exporting a normal 2048 subdivided mesh

[@EstebanBustos]

Did you get the optimized mesh from Gaea or did it in blender?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Its a feature in the 2 more expensive tiers of Gaea. So you won't have it in the cheapest tier.

[@vfxfisher]

@17:52 you are talking about a second rock texture set (quixel) and, at this point, there is no indication which it is. The first one was shown during the ingestion process; but not the second. Is there a list of which of the Quixel assets you used?

[@vfxfisher]

The Second set is "THFKCHJS" - as soon as i sent this msg you shopwed an interface with the name. I thought that may happen. Haha

[@Maarten-Nauta]

I can't remember which specific texture it was, but you should try all kinds of textures and see which works best for certain environments! Quixel has so many good cliff textures!

[@Savehumanity.]

@@vfxfisher same

[@chicoB001]

I'm trying to learn Gaea and would love to learn from your terrains. Are you selling your gaea terrain files on gumroad as well? would be an instant buy from me. Thx!

[@jameshopemusic]

Also....Where are you getting your base grass texture from? Thanks!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Its the patchy grass texture from Quixel!

[@kaleabspica8437]

can we import blender landscape in gaea and creat mask ?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

You can export your blender landscape as an OBJ. and then import it into Gaea I believe. I have never done it so you'll have to google for further info!

[@tensor9470]

Hey, do you have a more in-depth gaea tutorial on your patreon for these mountains? I really want to learn your technique that you used in the mountain pack 😄

[@Maarten-Nauta]

I do have a video on Patreon covering selective processing in Gaea that uses one of these mountains to break it down yes.

[@tensor9470]

@@Maarten-Nauta Count me in!

[@MrLarsalexander]

Do you know how to get this over to a heightmap format for UE? TIFF - GEOTIFF - PNG - R16(RAW) Then i mean with the small micro displacement for cliffs and even smaller rocks/Slope rock cliffs/Slope gravel rocks/RiverBed Rocks/ and so on. But also with splatmaps/weightmaps/masks that can be used to import on the material layers of the landscape later in UE5 or Unity even. Point is that you no longer need a displacement map and tessellation in the engine, since it is already "baked" on the landscape.

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Just export an obj or fbx mesh from your terrain creation software

[@santhoshkumar-wy9cu]

do more tutorials like this bro

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Yessir!

[@LukeTobsMusic]

Nice video! I tried to do the cavity map thing and it turned out blank! Could you please post in the description your cavity map?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Are you using a heightmap with a displace modifier? You can only cavity paint on an object without modifiers. In the video I use the LOD .obj to cavity paint and then bake out that map and apply it on the mountain which uses the heighmap.

[@LukeTobsMusic]

@@Maarten-NautaNo. I am using the LOD .obj object to cavity paint just like in the video. I selected the image texture with the UV editor open and hit the bake button. It finished after a minute and showed up blank. It had the transparent pattern in the UV editor and when I saved the image, it turned out black.

[@MVWDave]

Hi Maarten. I'm looking at buying the pack on your gumroad. I looked for contact info there to ask some pre-sales question, but I didn't see one. So here goes. 1) Will this pack still work in Blender 4.1? I don't see why it wouldn't, but I thought I'd ask. 2) Some of your bigger packs have different licenses. The pack linked above only has one. Can I use the meshes commercially with that license? 3) Are the only payment options credit card and Apple Pay? I didn't see a PayPal link, but perhaps I missed it. Thanks for your help. All the assets look great.

[@Maarten-Nauta]

1. Yeah the pack should work in 4.1, most of the files are just image files and some objs (I havent heard anyone with issues yet) 2. Yeah its the full license 3. The pack is available on Gumroad and Artstation, im not sure what all the payment options are for those websites but if PayPal is not one of them I can sadly not add that payment option.

[@MVWDave]

@@Maarten-Nauta Awesome. Thanks.

[@bhadra966]

Hey. Maarten. Where did you learn Gaea from?

[@friendlySmiley]

I have some problems with the Box 18:47. When I turn it on from flat to Box it gets these wierd round stripes ? Can someone please help me I really have no clue🤷‍♂✌

[@friendlySmiley]

So basically I´ve found the mistake. I scaled the Mountain to high and converted it into a mesh. I fixed it still a great Tutorial :)

[@gyanendramishra9043]

How to use tree map which has been given in texture set??? Someone please help...

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Using this addon: blendermarket.com/products/scatter/?ref=982

[@saberpotatoboy4151]

what hdri are you using? looks great!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

www.2gacademy.net/resources these free HDRI's

[@saberpotatoboy4151]

@@Maarten-Nauta thanks! do you remember what number your hdri was?

[@irfan-gusani]

Hello Maarten, I recently purchased the pack and noticed some missing textures. When attempting to open the projects, I encountered purple and white mountains, along with several 'unidentified' red nodes. Any assistance you could provide would be greatly appreciated. By the way, I'm really enjoying the content! :) Thanks!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

What version are you using?

[@irfan-gusani]

@@Maarten-Nauta 3.0 and also 4.0. Tried on both and same results.

[@jameshopemusic]

In Gaea , the mesher output node only gives me the option to output tris or quads. How do you get it to output the adaptive tri’s like the meshes you get?

[@samuelhoppe1528]

I posted this above, but keep in mind if you bought Gaea at the Indie tier, the optimized mesh feature is disabled. You can only generate uniform meshes.

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Sorry missed this comment, but yes Samuel is right, its sadly not available for Indie tiers.

[@Meriemferhatl121]

The blender environement world got me interested...and I wanna enroll into this world despite my 30y old ass 😅.. May ask what's the least laptop characteristics to start it ? Thanks ❤

[@Maarten-Nauta]

The least would probably be a GPU with 8GB of VRAM, a mid range CPU, and 32GB of RAM

[@pickledlasagne1681]

whenever I add the height map nothing seems to happen and my plane stays the same, any thoughts on why?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Make sure your plane is subdivided enough for it to get an actual shape. On the displacement modifier increase the strength and change "local" to "uv".

[@pickledlasagne1681]

@@Maarten-Nauta thanks that worked but I have ran into another issue regarding the texture painting, i cant seem to get the rock brush to do anything, it comes up on the left side but nothing happens to the actual mountain, ps thanks for this great tutorial i have learnt a lot about texturing

[@kopykatz0575]

I'm currently having an issue where using the blur node causes my blender to give me the error code "Requested OSL group data size (2504) is greater than the maximum supported with OptiX (2048)." To anyone else who might run into this issue, there is no fix for it other than to not use as many bump or blur nodes. The reason for using a GPU is for its ability to use "parallelism" which allows it to complete tasks at the same time, so this limit is set by Nvidia because it defeats the purpose of using a GPU to have a higher number.

[@kopykatz0575]

I take it back I went and did a little more research. You can switch the option of OSL (Open Shading Language) off underneath the render engine settings. As far as I can tell, OSL simply allows for more complex shaders, but sets limits on what you can do, so if you don't know how to use OSL or what it does for you, simply don't enable it.

[@dmas7749]

dumb question how'd you pull up the menu at 12:05?

[@mutekkiz7932]

Press N and then select View

[@djwrongen]

What spec pc you running when u doing this kind of work. ???

[@Maarten-Nauta]

This was done on a 3060ti and ryzen 7 3700x 32gb RAM

[@djwrongen]

@@Maarten-Nauta wow marginally close to my pc. I’m about to start my 3rd for a degree in game with the intention of doing environmental work. The way you work is awesome. Have you got a job in the industry yet. How’s did you find it??

[@IsaJoeFeat]

The names were inspired by avatar last airbender?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

No but close as its in the realm of a fantasy world like it! But its not Avatar.

[@tarunsinghal1475]

I wanna know the software name

[@Danger_N00dle]

Those notification sounds thingy can be quite distracting.

[@user-cm2os3pu3m]

Where did you download hdri?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

www.2gacademy.net/resources

[@richardrosal8557]

Can you do a close up tutorial?

[@Maarten-Nauta]

I mean sure! How close up?

[@richardrosal8557]

@@Maarten-Nauta Have you seen world creator's "I am"? I recall a scene in which there was a close-up of a snowy mountain. I tried but failed to recreate that scene. So perhaps close to micro. I'm also curious how you'll approach a micro mountain cliffs scene

[@Maarten-Nauta]

I've talked with Aaron who created that, and there is also a hardware limit when it comes to creating his level of detail. 8K or 16K mountain heightmaps, with texture displacement and on top of that insane composition and lighting skills. He used a pc with 4x 3090ti cards so getting Aaron Westwood quality is a bigger challenge than you would think haha.

[@RichardBellRookie]

nice tutorial but need to have less/no vocal audio in the backgroud....hard to concertrate otherwise.

[@kurumpuu5230]

lu ganteng from indonesia

[@skywu3098]

It would be nice if there were subtitles

[@Maarten-Nauta]

Working on it!

[@Maarten-Nauta]

There should be subtitles now

[@chrismalcheski9232]

It's a shame I'm the only Blender user on the planet who is not selling addons.

[@vacpw03]

Great terrain but the tutorial is not comprehensible for beginners! Far too complicated and far too fast

[@callisoncaffrey]

I see Windows, I leave.

[@gutlauninger]

youre awesome! i bought your assets and rebuilt the textures. looks very good. i will soon post something into facebook blender group. @immortalartscom