One day build: the moss cave
Where a plane gets extruded into a mossy cave!
One day build: the moss cave
Model: Julia Filament - using imagery we took earlier for Painted
Tools used: Blender, Photoshop
Materials used: moss objects from Ian Hubert. Sky background by Alessandro Viaro
Created: February 2021
This was a one day build.
This morning I became inspired by some photoscanned moss from Ian Hubert and I wanted to play around with something similar. Not havinga a plan, and not knowing what I wanted, I just started with a plane. A square. And I started to extrude. And extrude again. And some more. And... I accidentally made a cave!
If a cave it is, then a cave it shall be! I set on making it a realistic cave.. one you might actually want to (or not want to) be in. So it needed things that would fit.. would there be a path? If so, how would it have eroded the ground around it? Would there be water? Would it be lived in? Or would this cave be in someplace remote, and completely undisturbed? I find it important to get answers to these questions, because each then provides you with details on how you would fill in the world. A lived in cave would have a worn footpath without rocks in the way, for example, whereas an undisturbed one with water nearby might be full of plants and vegetation...
That sounds cool! Let's do that. With moss. Lots of moss!
See below for a step by step behind-the-scenes runthrough of this scene.
BTS 1: an extruded cave
I started with a plane. Then I extruded one of the sides, quite randomly. And I started repeating. Extrude, extrude, extrude. Fill some. Extrude some more.. and this was the shape I ended up with. Here you can already see some rocks and a plane for the water I added later.
BTS 2: add moss.
And then for the fun bit! I added moss. In this case random bits of greeny stuff near the waterline and wherever I wanted something special using Blender's Scatter tool.
BTS 3: lots of moss!
Using particle systems I added more moss! Various types and sizes, scaled randomly and with shaders adjusted to all kinds of blueish colors to fit the scene. For this I used the Scatter plugin found on Blendermarket.
Version 1: first render!
Didn't like it. Too bright.
Version 2: it's dark now.
Turned off the sun. Added some moonlight and stars. This is better! I added a reference yellow light to indicate where I might want to build a fireplace. I later abandoned that plan, but it gave me some context and size to work with.
Version 2: added god rays
I wanted some cool atmospheric effects with sunbeams (or moonbeams), and I felt lazy, so I added a sunlight, a cube with volumetric lighting and a ehm.. cheese grater? A thing with random holes in it, to substitute for a cloud deck as I didn't want to find or create a perfect cloud texture, and this would do just fine.
Version 3: added a model
I originally planned to keep this file for a while until I found a shoot that would suit it, but while discussing the earlier versions with Julia, I thought it would actually be nice to re-use a photo from one of our earlier shoots in this picture. So I did. I recolored it to match the scene somewhat, made a cutout and added it to the scene. This is starting to work!
Version 4: add fireflies!
... ehm, no. That didn't work.
Final render BTS
Here you see the various bits that made up this render; the cave with model, the various fog layers. The 'cheese grater' on the left is actually something to block some of the sunlight, so I had more interesting light lines to play with. In the background I used a texture of stars (provided by Alessandro Viaro on Unsplash)
Final result
I added some more atmospherics, and some extra dust in photoshop, and done!