How do you manage to do the surroundings of an aerial scene?

[augustobohm]

Hello everybody,

 

Last week i have started a new project of a condominium on a rural region.

 

Problem is, i didn't have any success building a realistic landscape with google maps images, and i also think it become a bit creepy with that. I want to know, how do you create your landscapes?

I've seen some images on CGA gallery wchich are pretty awesome, but i couldn't figure out how did they created that.

 

My next step is creating a blend material with lots of types of grass textures to manage the variety of colors in the rural landscape, but i'm now quite sure about that.

 

Please, share with me your experiences.

Thank you!

[pablovergara]

If you can get your hands on a drone that'd be ideal since you're getting photos of the real environment.

If you can't then I'd suggest getting photos of real terrain seen from afar, and mix them with other textures of detailed terrain IF you're gonna be closeup only. What I did once was select 3 regions of polygons on my terrain, the "near", mid and background polys and applied different textures to them so the effect would sell. although I was not modelling a specific terrain, mostly similar shapes. big planes with a few hundred subdivisions and displacement on top.

Here's the animation, I made all the modeling lighting and rendering, other people made the animation tho. See the background terrains.

Also I used the same texture to the terrain on the left in this image:

http://pablovergaravisuals.com/oztjechst9zwq0ttjutsp4gyqtdig1

[augustobohm]

Yeah, definetly, a drone whould be the perfect solution, but it si not on my plans to buy one, this year at least... so i thnk i found a way to use google maps and get a good result... Thanks Pablo!

Edited May 17, 2016 by augustobohm

[Dejan Sparovec]

Care to share how you managed to "use google maps without getting crappy"?

[augustobohm]

alright... comment edited

[himanshuchoudhary]

Have you looked into this?

 

 

It can give you quite a detail level of 2d map.. and then you can use various plugins like multiscatter or FP with masks in photoshop.

[Jesper Pedersen]

Hi Augusto,

We did an animation a while back where we used Google Earth imagery on a contoured terrain (although it was virtually flat and in hindsight just making it flat would have greatly simplified the project), anyway, the main difference is that we used 3d trees (with Forest Pack) and as the site was adjacent water we had the advantage of using this to help make the animation more real looking than what viewers would be familiar with from Google Earth.

As in Pablo's (very nice) animation, the critical thing is to get lots of 3d elements/features into the site model, particualrly close to the subject. After that you get away with a simpler distant background.

There's a link to our animation here (its the first 30secs or so that has the fly-in):

http://www.pedersenfocus.ie/portfolio/fota-wildllife-park

 

good luck

Jesper Pedersen

www.pedersenfocus.ie

Edited June 5, 2016 by jesper54321