So, this is my snowman rendered with EEVEE:
What could I do better?
These are my render settings:
Hey Ingmar, that's looking awesome! Happy to see it all finally come together. :)
I think the overall composition of the snowman is spectacular. I'd look at playing around with the directional light a little bit, I think that it washes out your snow material just a touch. You could do this by bringing down the curve a little bit like I did for mine, or even just try and change the directional light's intensity/rotation.
All in all, it's putting me into the holiday spirit, great job! -Chunck :)
Thanks, Chunck, for the lighting tips which I'll try out. In the meantime I've found another setting in order to soften the "Contact Shadows" of the "Sun Lamp". It's the "Bias":
1) "Contact Shadows" with old "Bias"
2) "Contact Shadows" with new "Bias"
3) Without "Contact Shadows" (differences mainly at the pipe, the carrot nose and the hat)
I also had to lower the "Contact Shadow Thickness" for the "Sun Lamp" in order to get rid of a strange triangle shaped shadow artifact under the pipe's mouth piece:
This leaves just a little but barely noticable light gap under the hat but this looks better than the shadow artifact mentioned above. The "Strength" settings for the "Area Lamp" as well as the "Sun Lamp" have been lowered as well for this screenshot.
Oh, and a wild cousin of our snowman has been seen recently showing his beautiful winter fur 😉😁:
Oh wow, the bias really did make a huge difference! I'm thinking you're going to be teaching next year's seasonal course, at this rate! :D Really like the snow too, did you use a particle system?
It's looking fantastic, Ingmar! Ya, the contact shadows are definitely a quick fix, but you've got to be careful with them more often than not. I'm really digging his fur coat, although I'm not seeing enough trees to constitute this as being the forest! ;)
chunck Thank you, Chunck, for the kind words 😀! I've used a particle system with an instanced "Snow Flake" object. The trees still have to grow 😉 and there maybe should be some footprints unless this is an "Angel Snowman" who miraculously managed to come to this place merely by himself 😉😁! But who knows, the "Snowmen Universe" still has many undiscovered areas 🕵️♂️ ...
Ya they look sweet, really ties it all together. :D Might need the sapling addon to get those trees growing a little faster, though!
Thank you for sharing your process! It's been fun watching you go through it, seeing how and where you made some changes. I think you've definitely taught me throughout this course as much as I've hopefully taught you! :)
Thank you, chunck , for that course! I really enjoyed it and it came at the right time 😀!
I've revisited @jlampel 's excellent course on "Fundamentals of Digital Lighting in Blender" with its "EEVEE" chapter here.
The smaller the "Bias" is set the smaller details are able to cast shadows. But this can cause jagged shadow edges which can be smoothed out by checking "Soft Shadows" in the "Shadows" tab of the "Render Properties" panel:
But this caused with "Contact Shadows" a hard division line between sunlit areas at the front of the snowman and self-shadowed areas due to the uneven surface of the snowman's main body as displayed here with a "Bias" of "0.03". Therefore, I had to choose a higher "Bias" of "0.311" in order to exclude smaller details from casting shadows which helped getting a smoother division line as can be seen here.
Some trees have miraculously grown around the snowman last night:
PS: The trees 🌲 are "borrowed" from another tutorial. Who knows it 😉?
Ha, it really IS the snowman from the forest now. :D And I'm going to take "Trammel's brand new 'Forest' course" for 500, please!
chunck 500 points go to you 💰💰💰. Yes, Kent's course about the creation of a "Stylized 3D Forest" is really fun and creates beautiful scenes 🎨🎄. I've replaced the "Material Colors" by "Vertex Colors" and "Dirty Vertex Colors" following Kent's instructions. I'll plug these colors into the "Shaders" using "Attribute Nodes".
