Freshwater aquarium, part 2

Before I start creating the plants, I have an update on last week's render. I figured out why it required so much memory. When you tick the "Adaptive" option on the SubSurf modifier, it gives you a new "Dicing" option. Not knowing what I was doing, I set it way too low. But now that I've fixed it I can enjoy the benefits of GPU rendering again. Hurray!

I've also had a look at combining displacement and bumps. I was very lucky to find Gleb Alexandrov's two-part tutorial dealing with that very thing (it would take forever to explain here so you are probably better off if you go and watch it yourselves. Here you go.) Using the techniques he demonstrates, I was able to crank up detail on the pebbles and rocks. I especially like the moss-covered formation on the right. Hard to believe it's just a couple of cubes with textures on them.

Last week's render

With increased detail

Now. With all of this off my chest, I can finally focus on the theme of this week, which is... wait for it... zombies! Err, no, that's not right... Plants, sorry. I always confuse the two. I need to create reasonable variety and number of them, while also making sure that I'm not rendering the scene for a week. I remember seeing a tutorial once in which they used simple planes with textures on them to create the illusion of a dense bush. (I also remember thinking it was cheating. You should always model every little detail yourself, right?) So this is the path I'm going to choose—and I hope it's not going to be covered in thorns.

***

Eh. Why do I keep saying those things? Well, I have my first plant. For those of you interested in fishkeeping, it was meant to be Anubias Nana (no, don't hit me, aquarists, ow, ow!) The leaf texture I used was labelled simply "leaf" so it gave me enough artistic freedom to claim it for whatever I wanted it to be. It was also alpha-masked which made it very easy to use on a plane.

I tried scaling the plane up to create the stem but it looked horrible. So instead, I had to model it separately. And boy, was it a pain. Not only it adds geometry but it also has to stay connected to the plane somehow. Which is the one thing it didn't want to do. If I joined the two objects, the leaf UVs got messed up somehow. The alpha parts took on the stem material, which, needless to say, wasn't exactly what I was after. So I had to keep the objects separate. Placing them under an empty parent worked. I could even scale things up by scaling the empty. But I still got into problems when rotating things around. In short, it took a lot of effort to position the leaves and stems into a nice looking bundle.

***

The second plant was much easier, mainly because I already had a working node setup.

I wanted to make something visually different from the first one so I used Water Wisteria for inspiration (I found a leaf texture that looked somewhat similar). And then it was just duplicating, rotating and individually adjusting leaves that would represent a single plant.

***

Having only two plants would not do so I created one more—this time inspired by the Amazon Sword kind. And when I was at it, I slightly adjusted the shape and color of Anubias and voilà—purple... Anubias? Not really. Purple... something. The leaves are not directly growing from the ground but are placed on a branch instead (I cheated a bit here and just scaled up the stem I already had).

All plant types

Then I decided to experiment with materials. I removed the bump node (to use only normal map), removed the normal map to use displacement and bumps, added translucency, tried myriads of different color combinations and light setups... aaand it looked worse. I lost quite a lot of detail and the colors looked less natural. Humbled, I had to return to my original setup.

***

After this fiasco I focused on filling the scene. Before I started, it seemed like a daunting task but once I placed a few plants, it became easier. But then I ran into a different problem—scene management. With every duplicated plant, the number of objects grew considerably. Yes, they were hidden behind an empty, acting like a folder, but without the benefits of one. If I selected the empty and copied it, it copied just the empty—not the leaves and stems associated with it. Which meant I had to select things by pressing Shift+G > Children. All the time. Ghh. Half a kingdom for proper folders.

In another "material-adjusting" fit I realized I needed to fix the lighting first. It started to seem far too dull for an aquarium scene. So I used the idea from last week and added two cylinders that are now acting as halogen lights. The scene immediately started looking better and the plant materials as well.

***

Having placed all the plants I wanted to, I went in for the final details. The area where the plants are touching the pebbles always looked a bit odd to me. Then it dawned on me that I could borrow the grass particle system from Mr Snail and transform it into a moss / short grass.

The first attempt was ridiculous. It looks like someone made a golf course at the bottom. Also, adding the particle system to the pebbles mesh had the nasty side effect of ruining the front part (don't ask me why). To simulate the pebbles being pressed to the glass, I had to create two pebbles materials, each of them with different displacement values (the one at front being flatter). Maybe that was the reason? Or a hidden surprise coming from the Experimental set? Who knows. In the end I duplicated the top part of the mesh and used it as emitter for the grass. Luckily, you can hide the emitter so it didn't mess up anything else.

And that's it for today, folks. And would you look at that? I'm ahead of schedule. Yay me! That means I can start sculpting fish as early as next week. The sculpting I'm looking forward to, the texturing... not so much. It will be a difficult one (hint: fish are translucent). Wish me luck!