Scatter Large-scale Forests in Blender

In this video, ‪@MartinKlekner‬ shows how to scatter 2D billboard trees onto your 3D landscapes in Blender. You will learn two workflows, using the Particle System and Geometry Nodes. Learn how to create 2D billboard trees in part 1 of the tutorial: • Fake Large-scale Fores...
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LINKS
⇨ Landscape Breakdown: • Large-scale Landscape ...
⇨ 10 Tips for Creating Epic Landscapes in Blender: • 10 Tips for creating E...
CHAPTERS
00:00 - Intro
01:04 - Particle System setup
05:22 - Density with Weight Maps
08:54 - Geometry Nodes setup
14:14 - Orient towards camera
MARTIN'S SYSTEM
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
GPU: GeForce RTX 3080
RAM: 64 GB
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[@cgboost]

🎓 Master 3D Environments in Blender course: cgboost.com/courses/master-3d-environments-in-blender 📥 Download the project files here (click on KZbin Tutorials & Project Files): www.cgboost.com/resources/

[@marcfuchs6938]

This tutorial was gorgeous. Everything very comprehensible, I have the feeling to have understood every detail, which is usually not the case with complex tutorials. I don't think I need any other tutorial for also generating a forest landscape. In the past I already created scattered landscapes, but with placing every single element by hand, and it would really not make sense to keep about going with such a clunky workflow. Also since it limits you incredibly by not easily being able to re-arrange the landscape. I have never yet worked with particles or geonodes, but with this tutorial, it should be easy to accomplish. It's easily a 10/10 from me.

[@cgboost]

Thanks for your nice feedback ^^

[@kritzstudio]

Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge with all of us! We're truly grateful! Greetings, and have a great weekend!

[@adelaveroes]

Wonderful! Very clear and to the point. Love the floating Donuts in the distance!

[@yosefadamu9590]

As always great tutorial.

[@pravinrenders]

There's no strange reason blender uses 'Z' up infact it's the most accurate way, unlike many other software. In mathematics, the Z axis is normally defined as up, while the X and Y axes define a flat ground plane. Most 3d cad softwares also uses Z up.

[@priyam352]

The „strange reason“ was referring to blender using y axis for up in particle systems but then using z everywhere else

[@h4nv]

Weight paint trick seems very useful and saves so much time!

[@JointManJoe]

i might be incorrect, but isnt the whole camera tracking from the previous video lost on the particles? So they dont turn with the camera?

[@decnet100]

Thank you very much for this tutorial! This comes in very handy for recreating the alpine area around Innsbruck in Blender for a racing game. One possible improvement though for this specific scene's realism that I have to add from my professional background: You're adding exclusively broadleaved trees, which of course creates a nice colorful impression, and is in line with your previous tutorial; it makes total sense from that perspective; I just have to add that particularly oak trees in real life don't like the shown environment too much, which very much comes across as a cold, high-mountainous to alpine environment with those snow-covered peaks. Up there in that climate, they get overshadowed by coniferous trees quite regularly on European, American and Asian mountain ranges, as they can deal with the cold and snow much better and they displace the broadleaves species quite effectively, even though there is often some maple and beech mixed in with them in a natural mountain forest there. So to faithfully represent a mountainous scene like this, one should replace the oaks by some coniferous trees like pine, larch, spruce and fir, in fact at least half the trees you'd find in such a climate will be coniferous. Loads of coniferous trees with their typical dark, bluish-green appearance and "spikey" shape will of course make a visual difference from warm-color, "ball-shaped" broadleaves species from miles away, and a lack of them is indeed quite noticable and may feel off on renders to people like myself - even though the warmer colors of the broad-leaved species will certainly make it look more appealing :). One could add in more larch as a replacement, if the color palette needs to be warmed up..

[@cgboost]

Thank you so much for these notes, it's always interesting to hear this kind of critiques!

[@lucyfaire1980]

Thank for this, excellent tutorial, learned a few new tricks along the way

[@alejandrovallejo4330]

Maybe you have this in your master 3D environments course, but what seems to be missing for me is how to make sure the environment is at the right scale.

[@cgboost]

You're right that it is a cruicial thing for realistic and belieavable effect and it is discussed in the course.

[@darrennew8211]

I love cgboost tutorials. Always very clear and detailed, with a great progression of knowledge. I suspect the Y-axis bit was a bug that's just been carried forward forever for compatibility.

[@Ayayanamiya]

Seems like the tutorial from making the trees follow the camera, doesn't work with the Particle System. it is not following the camera/point I am trying to track, even though the original are following. It is just the ones in the particle system not working

[@jackward4519]

I was having some issues with black areas where the trees were denser but found that turning up the transparent value in light passes by a small amount seemed to fix the issue if anybody else runs into the same problem.

[@cgboost]

Thank you so much for the tip!

[@fullyleaded]

I did a test to scatter an object using geometry nodes and particle system to scatter it and the particle system file was much smaller.

[@datakenangan5253]

Sir, i cannot find this project file on the Dropbox resources, please update the file thanks. NB : I found the folder but not the blend file :(

[@funtasmo4321]

Great tutorial, thanx a lot! One question: The 3D objects point to the camera. OK. But angles arise where they point at right angles to the sun and the shadow will therefore disappear for all objects. How can you complement the Geo Nodes so that each object has a duplicate that is invisible to the camera and points to the sun (so it will cast a shadow)?

[@onemancreations]

❤

[@edenhazard2621]

My lap is ho omen 16...16 gb ram and 8gb graphics card amd.procesor....can i do this in my lap smoothly?...i don't know much about specification

[@starrysobazei7505]

You are good to go,, my bro.

[@cgboost]

Should work fine!

[@eliodonvito9252]

Thanks you very much ! But I have a problems : the trees are floating on top of the surface … I can’t resolve this

[@eliodonvito9252]

The solution : my Origin on the plane wsnt on the very bottom ! another reasons could be the "Normal" values in the Velocity settings

[@blunox2239]

This is great but why not use unreal engine 5 ?

[@geekytuner2361]

my problem is that after scattering the trees in the plane , it becomes blakish

[@spaceexpireaudio666]

I wonder if that technique would work well with city buildings. My computer just can`t do them as a real 3d

[@cgboost]

Yeah, if they are far away from the camera, it could totally work! Of course, you would need to adapt the technique and maybe use cubes instead of planes, but I think it's worth trying. ~ Masha

[@spaceexpireaudio666]

@@cgboost thank you!

[@SamuelMoyoNdovie]

I get black shadows overlaying on each other when I try to scatter them , is there a way on how to fix this

[@jakewoods2935]

inccrease light bounces in rendering.

[@murgatroydfungus4352]

The camera alignment part for the geonodes method does not work for me. When I replicate your node setup, all the trees rotate the at the same angle according to the camera's rotation instead of rotating at different angles to face the camera object.

[@MartinKlekner]

Have you check Seperate Children and Reset Children?

[@ilyakostin5676]

@@MartinKlekner it also doesn't work for me, they're not even rotating for some reason... These checkmarks are checked, everything is plugged into the same way

[@vachamroeun5971]

The steps of video 📸 not marching eachother to understand how to do

[@cgboost]

Hi, which steps are not clear to you? Maybe we can help you to understand. ~ Masha