Environmental Scene Project: Pastoral Sheffield

 I once had a dream in which I lived in an idealised pre-industrial Sheffield. From my cottage on the outskirts, I could see the familiar skyline, with a handful of towers projecting from the built-up city centre, but everything was leafy and rural, with elegant stone-clad buildings. This dream happened years ago, but it created such a sense of dream euphoria that I became depressed on waking. A severe case of H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands, a place people go to that becomes more real and more important than their waking life.

What a subject for an environmental project. One that will pull together the lessons I've gained so far from Piotr Krynski's course.

Midjourney

It started with a Midjourney output that evokes pleasant feelings of familiarity. I particularly like the Gothic mansion in the middle ground. The City isn't quite right, but I can work on the details as the scene gets put together.

First, I need to break down the terrain elements. These are the most significant components, and it's crucial to get the scale right if you want lighting and environment to behave realistically. It's not that you can't fake it, but you might end up where you need to add too many fake or botched elements to overcome inconsistencies in haze and overall lighting.

Foreground: A steep element that supports a single tree and a flowery meadow. This area can support densely scattered grass.

Middle ground: Fields and dense copses break up the elevation ahead of a grand building at the top of the hill.

Background: The most complex element is the plain broken by hedgerows and individual trees, which leads into a city element, which fades into the background several kilometres away. 

Rough blockout using random terrains

This could be best done on three plates: Foreground, Middle ground, and Background. This requires more planning and effort to coordinate, but you can utilise all your system resources for each element, resulting in a final scene that would be impossible to render in one shot. Challenge accepted!

So I'm going to start by sculpting three separate terrain elements.