Blender School - blending object materials

 

Blending into the ground

There are techniques for placing terrain assets to blend with the ground material and remove obvious seams. The same technique can be used in other situations, but this scenario was raised by Drew, the director. Given that I try these things, then forget what I did some weeks or months later, I thought I'd make this a Blender School post.

Technique 1: Geo-Nodes (From James Combridge)

 Concept: Create a mask to apply to an object's material that checks the distance from the ground object.

Object info node that looks at the Relative position of the GroundPlane Object via the Geometry Proximity Node (distance). The result is pushed through the Stored Named Attribute node and is given the name GroundMask. Simples!

The Rock (object) material gets the Ground material added via a Mix Shader node using the "GroundMask" attribute we just set up.

For more control over the blend placement, make the following edit to the GroundMask:

Take the Geometry Proximity output and feed it through a Map Range, using its adjustments to fine-tine where the blend happens. You can further improve the look by adding another Map Range, mixing them (Mix node) using a Noise Texture as the factor.

Technique 2: Normal Mapping (From SpennyFX)

SpennyFX looked at an alternative to the above technique using normals.

First tip: These materials shouldn't be wildly different or the results are not likely to be convincing, at least close up.

This technique produces a more ambient-occlusion-like mask suitable for smaller objects.

The factor for the Mix node is the object's normal separated on the Z-axis and pushed through a colour ramp (default) that is adjusted to mix in the ground to the bottom of your target objects.

There's a third technique available that I won't go into here. It handles the blend as a compositor step. See more about it on the CG Matters channel.

Testing Blender 5.1

In spite of a number of quirky errors, Blender 5.1 looks functional. The only major addon that remains incompatible (as far as I've tested) is Geoscatter.

Small teams don't always have the bandwidth to update addons prior to a new Blender release. That's fine. I would maybe not sling mud, though. Blender has updated its underlying Python version. It seems a bit unfair to characterise this as "breaking" most addons. It's a major, breaking product change, but it's well understood and planned. It falls on addon developers to track and keep their products up-to-date.

I guess that Geoscatter will be updated in due course, and it's possible that Blender 5.1 might need a hotfix if any serious issues fall out of general use.

Breakthrough.. I think

 

World-Creator limits its sculpt tile to 1024x1024 pixels. You just can't make fine-detailed terrains or coastlines with the sculpt layer. Solution: Use an array of sculpt tiles and carefully blend them to create a seamless, high-resolution terrain sculpt. The coastline comes out so much better this way. 

The next challenge will be to blend this lake plate into a larger terrain with mountain ranges in the background and a canyon-like badlands in the foreground.

Blender 5.1

Is due to be released today. I tested the Release Candidate last week. It wasn't supported by many of my critical (True-VFX) addons, so I ended up not using it in anger.

[Update] Blender 5.1 released and installed along with a flurry of critical addons. It looks like most things are working. Geoscatter is one addon that looks to be awaiting a necessary update.

Other stuff I should think about

Finish something!
I have about six "projects" that are just waiting to be worked to a level of completion. Maybe get some of them done?

Do some more training!
I have a bunch of courses waiting to be completed. Some I haven't even started.

Terrain therapy

There's a new World Creator release (2026.3) that resolves the instability issues I experienced in the last build. I've enjoyed testing it because, if you've read any three posts on this entire blog, you will know that I love noodling with terrain. I just need to push myself into the less safe territory of finishing landscape scenes.

Mountain place

Strata slope

Lake under a ridge

Thoughts about massive terrain scenes

 This current shot has had me stumped. I think I know why. Very high-altitude shots are just a lot bigger than you think. At 1000m altitude, you can see 70km -- it's a Pythagorean theorem application.

70km is a lot of landscape. It's far more than you could ever see from the ground.

70km is about the span of the Alps

Break

 I didn't get time for any Blender, yesterday. A rare thing! I'd only had three hours of sleep and my head never quite made it to planet Earth.

I did some drawing for a t-shirt. It's based on a sculpture in the grounds of my son's school. 

It really is time to get this giant terrain scene done. I'm looking at how I need to change my approach to accommodate its massive scale.

1) Smoke and mirrors
I need to stop trying to brute-force full scenes with high-poly scatters. There really shouldn't be any scatters at this altitude.

2) Consider using render layers

Instead of doing the whole scene in a single pass, break it down. It takes a lot more planning, but it can be the only practical way of rendering especially complex scenes.

3) Look at what the top artists do
There are plenty of great Youtube videos that cover terrain scenes. There are a couple of courses too. I still need to finish one of them. (Ultimate 3D Environment Animation Course - Blender)

Roofy cabin progress

 

It seemed a bit premature to start worrying about materials, but I needed to add some oomph to the model in order to get a feel for where to go next.

I gave up on building my own furniture and used the ABO Connect add-on to pick a nice table and chairs from a library of nearly 8,000 assets. Phew, that was £3 well spent!

I think the window frames will be better in a darker material. Also, I might add blinds to the windows on the first and second floors. The roofing tiles are not quite right. The material is not quite aligned with the tile geometry. I think the whole cabin needs to sit on some decking, with a drainage system running along the bottom to drain the runoff, or you'd soon get flooded.

I am toying with the idea of rooms extruding from the roof, maybe along with a chimney stack. 


Halo:Raptor

I've been trying to find my massive-terrain mojo. I need to really take care with the same of landforms, my 32km-long terrains have the wrong scales for mountains, there are not enough big, long flows.

Scales are wrong. The canyons need to be a lot narrower but not so deep.

Near the Hoover Dam. This is about 30km long

Reality has mind-blowing levels of detail. Impossible to represent from a World Creator sculpt, although I could do much better to suggest the right layers of detail -- big forms that are not too uniform. My sculpts are just a lot of continuous undilation. Above you see the mountains having long drainage channels to the lake.

More observation required!

Ohh nice

Seen on the new Sanctus website. Weird moment. Nice moment! 

Time-slip

 I seem to have drifted across the week, fulfilling basic requirements like eating, working and occasionally getting low-quality sleep. I'm getting behind with my Halo: Raptor commitments, so today is the day I start to turn that around, after a number of false starts.

Other stuff

I turned my attention to terrains...would you believe?!

Testing True-Vault assets

Brushed off a terrain sculpt from last year. I like! Let's scatter!

Na bad, but let's lower the P.o.V

Okay, but now we need some points of focus that aren't default cubes.

I'll whip up a quick model! Narrator: Quick models are never quick.

Posh cabin design - in progress

Next: Back to work on Halo: Raptor.
Then: Finish the cabin and place it into the terrain

And after that: Complete those PlantFactory tutorials, and some more of Cov's environmental training course, then, then.... Deep breaths and FOCUS.

Winter gloom begins to lift

 There seems to be more light and more moderate temperatures, which is raising my spirits a bit. The weekend was restful. I had jobs to do and got a bit of walking done. So work was due to begin this morning. Instead, I had some family issues to resolve, followed by a trip to donate a lot of old shirts that were too big for me.

Tomorrow morning, I will get back to work on the Halo: Raptor scene.

Terrains!

RiverEEn scene -- a test!

KrasnovMountains test scene.

Project progressus

 Earlier in the week, I installed PlantFactory to use it to generate custom plant assets for Halo: Raptor. This should help dodge the limitations of our very constrained asset collection. PlantFactory looks very powerful but very complex. So this morning I'm starting to learn the basics.

It looks like the old E-on software suite (VUE, PlantFactory, etc.) will be open source soon, which makes the time investment seem more worthwhile in the long term.

First big lesson: the plant collections are accumulative; you need to download and install all of them, not just the latest one. 

Sample tree ....oooh nodes nodes nodes!

Introduction to the UI

More soon!

Halo: Raptor

I'd got the shot's altitude wrong, based on the director's last comment, which he meant for the next shot, not the "next" shot. Nothing wasted, but I'm jumping back to the high altitude shot.

Back to work!

 

I'm settling back into the part-time job as I pick up my outstanding tasks for Halo: Raptor. To that end, I'm building an aerial/mountain-top view of a huge landscape. It's tricky because there's so much to coordinate within the frame. I might create a mock-up of my own to practice/test the workflow, which I can show here.

PlantFactory

Halo: Raptor needs to manage asset and addon licensing. This severely limits which plant assets are available for production -- the ones we have authorised don't match the Mediterranean biome of the scene. One solution I'm looking at is to use an industry-standard plant creation system that permits the use of generated plants in commercial projects. PlantFactory looks like an ideal candidate, except that I've never used it, and it seems like a lot of work to learn. Here goes, though.

Better schedule a few tutorials.

While PlantFactory lets you build any kind of plant, it apparently doesn't include Blender in its integration options. So I bought an addon. 

BF2B (https://superhivemarket.com/products/pf2b)

This looks like it will cure the headache of transferring your green things into Blender. We will see!