COLLAB2021 - WIP - raisonhomme

Wow. This was my first attempt at the ivy. I started with a particle system. But after I while I realized this would never bring the silhoutte and desired leaf orientations. Both the ivy plugin and the particle system remain too random, more apt for photorealistic styles at high numbers.

So, I took another direction. I'm going for foliage cards, trying to emulate the leaf shape from Vadim's work. This will be the bottom layer leaves. Further foliage cards will feature the full palette employed by Vadim. Subsequent shapes will be smaller, more random. I decided to forgo a central brown stem and rather evoke the impression of thinner green stems integrated in the foliage cards.

Thank you so much for your support! Yes, I've looked into the IvyGen addon - it is a great tool for photorealistic renders. I went through Jonathan's course on plants an even used it inthe background of my stylized forest tutorial (hidden by depth of field). I finally decided against it as for reasons I will I explain in my forthcoming WIP report.

I'm late to the blender crowd - I started in 2019 with blenderguru's donut. During the last chapters of the donut tutorial Andrew was going kind of nuts. I wondered - why does he obsess so much about the details? Now that I'm on the first project "in freefall" I find myself obsessing about small details, although most of the time not in front of a computer. Here's my story of the obsession.

1. Taking things to literally

My first failed attempt at the top is due to the name of the task: It was called ivy, thus I looked up reference images on ivy and even took photos of ivy outside.

Then it dawned on me: This looks nothing like Vadim's artwork! There's tons of geometry in the real world! It's all over the place! There's sharp and pointy edges everywhere! The leaves have bright veins! None of this is in Vadim's artwork. I could not get satisfactory results trying to emulate something that is not in the original. So we're in some kind of fantasy world, thus I figured I can create a fantasy plant that looks more like Vadim's artwork. The plant he chose is closer to the leaf of a sea rose, roundish and oval shapes abound.

2. Emulating Line of Balance in 3D

But there's more to consider. I could not get a decent silhouette with randomized particle systems. The silhouette follows a rule that ink artist Alphonso Dunn calls "the secret line of balance".

It is about lines and shapes which always follow one direction and then gently push to the opposite side. This what the secret line of balance looks like in Vadim's artwork:

I realized that I wouldn't be able to recreate this wonderful silhouette without manual labour. Particle systems wouldn't do. Furthermore, individual leaves should be visible and layered. Although many plants in the scene are rather "mushy" individual leaves heighten the appeal of the house. A green cloudy thing wouldn't to the job.

So I decided to go for hand-painted alpha cards. Alle leaves will be one material on which I push the UVs around.

I took a fuzzy brush in affinity and created clusters of leaves (just like Vadim did - you can see the repetition of his smart brush. There are clusters for the background. I picked most of the colors from the lit parts in the foreground.

I took advice from Marie Lazar's excellent blog entry on creating stylized plants and used some spare space for individual leaves that help for emulating the same "line-of-balance-silhouette" of Vadim's artwork.

3. Let's paint

Not quite happy with the blandness of the texture, I inserted some highlights on a different layer. If these highlights turn out to be clashing with the rest of the artwork I can return to the bland versions.

The goal for our project is to have a painterly style and yet - the leaves should have physical properties. I went about this Ian Hubert style and did a slapdash roughness map. The idea is that the roughness is lowest in the middle of the leaf where many plants feature a shiny stem.

I keep the effect subtle on the dials.

4. Going Unreal

The entirety of the first ivyish plant consists of roughly 40 cards, which makes it very low poly! I joined the project, because I want to become an environment designer for game engines. When I saw the project outline I thought right away of those games where the environment is the star, such as Firewatch or The Long Dark. I wanted to do the vines because I realized that the details of the environment can be harder to do than the landmarks. When Vadim asked in our chat if we could take this to Unreal I went - YES! - that's what I had in mind. Exploring such a dreamy world personally is great. My competitor is a far more proficient blenderer than I, so I decided that I focus on an asset that would go well with a game engine. His work will certainly be better for a render but this could be useful if we extend this into an Unreal project. (What is CGCookie doing with that Epic Megagrant anyhow?)  ;-) 

In order to have some random movement in Unreal I randomly painted some vertices on the green channel (chosen randomly) whilst favoring the upper parts of the vine cards.

Coming from blender node-fun is to be had in Unreal. The green vertex channel drives the displacement animation. So only green vertices are being "shoved around" more in the wind. And there it is shaking gently in the wind! Vines don't move like that? So what?! - They don't grow on wooden beams only either!

This project is fun!

Homework Submission - Week 2 - Nature:FG Ivy

@theluthier

Texture-painting and finishing the first corner was my goal for the weekend.

I documented how I got here in the post above. See you on Monday!

What a wonderful read. 

Thank you!

You have inspired me, Fabian:

Thank you so much for your support, Kent and Spikey! This collab is so inspirational!

On taking the animation to blender

spikeyxxx - you sure do know your way around them nodes! Some of those I have never seen before! Is that a "random integer pacemaker" on the far left? Would you mind sending me a high-rez version on the discord so I can replicate it for creating some wafting in blender?

This might be a good question for tomorrow: If everyone in the scene is working on a looping animation (wafting leaves, water, the tarp) should we agree on a frame number to make it looping? Off the top of my head I'd say 100 frames to have at least one different iteration of movement and counter-movement? In that case all looping animations need to end on frame 101? (I've never tried a looping animation before.)

Apart from Spikey's node setup I can thing of several ways to do the leaf animation in blender:

- a lattice deform, maybe two lattices because one part of the vines are facing the y and the other one the x axis.

- a gentle f-curve modifier with noise on the location and maybe the scale of the alpha-cards.

Could you think of other ways I could approach this?

Is that a "random integer pacemaker" on the far left

No, that is an Input >  Value Node. In the value field I typed in:   #frame

that way, the value is the same as the frame number.

This was not intended as an animation demo, but to show the you can make rotated looking leaves from 'alpha planes', without rotating the planes themselves ;)

There are other ways to do leaf animations, for instance use a Particle Hair System with Hair Dynamics and no Gravity.

Then add a Particle Instance Modifier on the leaves and check Create Along Paths.

Here's a better picture than the GIF:

I'll have to leave for a bit now, but after that I will visit discord again (been a while...).

Homework submission - Week 3 - Nature:FG Ivy

@theluthier

I finished the tallest of the three vines using a numer of leaf variations. I wonder how it'll look on the final model of the house. I'll finish the other corner in the course of the week.

Thanks @jlampel for coming into the project.

Your input is very valuable. I sensed that there is something off about the painterly style. The beaniness clearly was an issue.

I reworked the texture entirely going for crisp edges this time, adding small veins but leaving the spots for the moment. Since I'm going to play with scales for leaf variation, I want to have consistent spots as in film grain. I have uploaded the texture in 2k and will shrink it to the agreed 1k once they are finally adjusted.

While painting, it turns out that I may have gone a little crazy with the gradients, which need to be toned down in the node setup.

The node setup tones down the heavy gradients of the original texture and provides some spots on the leaves.

I'll fix the broken UVs over the course of the next days. I'll also add the twigs that go every which way and add some loop cuts to bend some of the alpha planes. Your input has already been very valuable! Thanks a lot!

Homework submission - Week 4 - Nature:FG Ivy

@jlampel

 I've added quite a few more subdivided planes as branches that are sticking out.

Some planes are gently curved in order to create a nicer overlap.

On the corner of the entrance I made sure that the silhouette matches the line of balance, using my separate leaves on my alpha card generally pointing upwards on the corners and the very tip.

Furthermore, I replaced the texture in the folder with a 1k texture as specified in the project outline.

Full foliage - prior version

reduced foliage in edit mode with hidden planes

I guess you're right. Focusing on the asset isolated from the other assetsof the scene I may have given it too much geometry for fear it might look to whimsical. However, when I reduced the number of cards too strongly, the fact that they are made of alpha planes stood out quite a bit. But I liked the effect of randomly reducing the number of cards to have a more uneven distribution. In the lower version the ivy tapers in the middle section, which reduces the initial pillar-shape. For the lower version I hid some planes in edit mode. When overlays are deactivated it is possible to use tab for switching between the two versions in object and edit mode. I think it will much depend on how this works with all the assets in place.