3d art

Problems and
solutions
The EcoSystem Painter had a
bigger role in shaping the lake,
because, as I’ve mentioned in
Step 2, I find it easier and more
controllable to paint the
lakeside than to use a large
terrain and spend more time
in Photoshop and in the
terrain editor. I knew exactly
where I wanted to have the
edge of the lake, so I painted
rocks right there, then
adjusted the smaller terrains
next to the rocks. This is a
great and easily applicable
solution to create lakes, if you
use similar EcoSystem on the
surrounding terrains. If you
use the same, dense-grass
EcoSystem on each terrain,
the multiple smaller terrains
will look like one large terrain.
Since I used a multilayered
EcoSystem here with a dense
grass layer, the terrains’
underlying material was not
too important either. I used
the same rock material I
added to the painted rocks,
but I could have picked some
soil or mossy rock too.
Multilayered EcoSystems are
useful if you want to have
more control over the overall
density of the different
species, and their direction
from surface. While the
grasses’ and the bushes’
direction is 100%
perpendicular, the trees
grow rather vertically.
Assembling the scene
Planting the foliage for the EcoSystem
04 Creating the ecosystem – overview
Since I wanted to paint the scene in the colours of fall
(autumn), this season determined my selection of plant
species for the EcoSystem. The foreground terrain has
one grass layer, the middle-ground terrains have two
layers (grass and bush), while the larger, background
terrains feature a third layer of non-HD fall rural maple
trees too d.
05 EcoSystem - grass
My first step of creating the EcoSystem was adding grass,
as the first ecosystem layer. A fresh-looking, bright green
grass wouldn’t fit this autumnal environment, so I chose
Buffelgrass from the AsileFX Sample Grass Pack. In order
to increase the brownish look, I added Dead Grass from the
same pack too. Since I didn’t want the ground to be visible,
I set the Density to 96%, I deselected Decay near foreign
objects, I set the Direction from surface to 100%
perpendicular, and then, to add some realism, I marked
Shrink at low densities e.
D A screen capture of the material editor that shows the three
layers of the EcoSystem
E A screenshot of the grass layer’s Scaling &
Orientation settings, and a render that shows
these settings in practice
06 EcoSystem – bushes & non-HD trees
For the bush layer I picked Nadina Domestica from the
Incredibly Lush Autumn Shrubs collection, and Bush 1 –
Crawling. To make this bush fit the environment, I went to
the Materials tab under the preview screen and changed the
colour of its leaves to something reddish. I set the Density to
90%, and the Direction from surface to 96% perpendicular.
I left everything else at default. I added another EcoSystem
layer to the background terrains, and loaded Scott McEwan’s
non-HD fall maple trees from his Rural Maple Tree pack. To
achieve a dense forest feeling, I set the Density to 80, and
I left everything else at default F.
F This render shows how the
scene looked after adding the
bush layer and the non-HD
maple trees
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