Purple garden
it started with a moodboard. And was planned as a studio shoot. But then I discovered the power of turning leaves purple!
Purple Garden
Model: Satiellacosplay
Tools used: Blender, Photoshop
Created: March, 2020
Crafting Notes
- This project started as projects should! With a moodboard! See below. Satiellacosplay and I tried to capture the essence of this cosplay both in clothing and in atmosphere, and that provided a baseline to work with. Never guessed how much it would have helped though! The Shinobu part of the moodboard was on my screen the entire time during 3D design.
- I hoped to find some cool 3D models of the Wisteria flower for this, but couldn't find anything that satisfied the budget I had for this shoot and had enough quality. Next time: bring more budget! (or do it yourself). I ended up using the same weeping willow tree over and over again, but with modified shaders for the leaves to get that purple feel.
- I still can't do water properly.. in this case I ended up with a subdivided mirrorplane with a wave distortion stacked on top to get that wavey feel. Not ideal, but it works.
Purple Garden - step 1
A moodboard! I am a big fan of moodboards! Mind you that these are actually two moodboards into one, but that's because we shot both on the same shooting day.
Purple Garden - Step 2
Let's sculpt some ground! This is very Bob Rossy, just dab here and there and all accidents are intentional. Tree added for size :)
Purple Garden - Step 3
Okay, ground is there. Some water too... and I made some stairs similar to the moodboard! But it feels... empty? Time to add vegetation!
Purple Garden - Step 4
Particle systems to the rescue! I weight-painted where I wanted to have vegetation, and used a particle system to generate folliage. I also added some more trees. Copy paste, copy paste..
Purple Garden - Step 5
Certainly getting there! I played with the shaders for the folliage until it did evil things with purple. Also added the model in the scene! Looks cool, certainly works... but.. it is still way too empty! So, I ended up adding more trees, added some fog, then even some more trees, and finally did some post processing in photoshop for some foreground dust and that yielded the end result you see above! The total render time was approx 15 minutes for 5000x4000 pixels.
Purple Garden - zoomed out
I love how with these 3D scenes you exactly get what you see.. and absolutely nothing else! There's just no world beyond the camera frame. See below for a zoomed out render of this world. Quite empty, eh? :)
Purple Garden
.. and here it is! The final result.
Bonus: 360 panorama version!
It's all 3D anyway, so why not render it with a 360 camera :) Click to open in a panorama viewer.
Shinobu Kocho
Model: Satiellacosplay