Service Road

 Although this work is technically under an NDA, I judge that a fog-obscured render can get a pass.

Service Road: Biome design

I've been itching to learn more about biome design. At some point, I'll be putting together a test scene for the Production version of the service road -- even if I'm not officially assigned that work, I want to test my ability to polish the previs up to production quality.

Biomes are about creating natural scatter systems that reflect reality. The right plants growing together in realistic patterns. When I start creating half-decent scatters, I'll then learn how to animate them.

Environment notes

The service road is located in a Mediterranean-like location modelled on the biomes found on the Greek islands. Not a wild leap from the setting of the Game Arma 3, which was used to create the film's storyboard.



The following plant life is common to the biome.

Trees

• Olive trees (Olea europaea)
• Cypress trees (Cupressus sempervirens)
• Plane (Plantus)
• Pines (Pinus halepensis, Pinus brutia, Pinus nigra, Pinus pinea, Pinus silvestris, Pinus heldricheii, and Pinus peuce)

Also, deciduous trees, such as 

• Beach 
• Chestnut 
• Oaks
• Fruit trees (various)

The forests mostly have fir, pine, and bush trees. These trees are commonly found in the northern part of the country and in high altitudes in Sterea and Peloponnese. Forests at lower altitudes mostly have poplars, plane trees, oaks, and cypress. At the foot of the trees, various bushes and flowers grow.

Bushes

• Oleander (Nerium oleander)
• Pomegranate (Punica granatum)
• Bouginavillea 
• Cistus incanus and slvi folius
• Erica manipui flora
• Pistacia
• Buxus sempervirens
• Juniperus
• Arbutus unedo and andrachne

Small plants and flowers

• Common Poppy 
• Wild irises
• Cyclamen
• Anemones
• Sea thistles 
• Caper bushes
• Daffodils and Daisies

First test

Big Gripe Tree

So you need to search for particular tree types in your extensive collection of nature assets. No problem, just use the search field. Actually, a big problem. There's no naming convention, so different packs name their trees differently. An even worse situation is that lots of packs don't live in the asset library. True-Vault, Arborea, Grasswald, et al. So I need to do about five searches using both Latin and common names.  So in the next post, I'm going to record my current tree catalogue. Be prepared for a LOT of trees.

Novemberender

 On Friday I previewed fixed for the first service area fix. Success! Although I do need to increase the area by about 10%. I think that my dressing is too big and it's taking up more of the road area than the storyboard version.

I also found the scene to be really stuttery. A sure sign that it's too big for the animators. I'm now redoing all the service road cliff assets to make them more efficient and a lot better. I bought some VDB rock brushes so that I can sculpt realistic rock forms onto the rock walls and boulders. It's quite therapeutic!

Stuttery!

I now realise that I need to do more large-scale displacement on the cliff walls before applying rock structure. VDB brushes apply real geometry, so they create real displacement, but you need an enormous number of polygons on the mesh to bring out the lovely quality of rock.

Test rock assets

I decided that it would be more efficient to sculpt the rocks straight into the current placeholder planes rather than pipe up blocks like these. We'll see what this evening's test looks like.

True Sky 3

Oh my word, it's great.

This girl's sky...

Back to work ..on the service road.

 I have some outstanding revision work to complete on the previs service road elements. There's not a huge amount to do in principle, but I suspect that I will encounter some snags.

The biggest question mark is how successfully I can resculpt the ambush section's underlying terrain to take out a big kink that currently offers the characters a hide that they should have.

Here are the changes, in brief:

1. A hidden entrance

The tunnel entrance should be obscured so it startles the characters as they follow the road. The layout currently doesn't support this dramatic moment.

To do: resculpt and or redress the scatters so that the entrance isn't visible until you pass the area (in red). Also, replace the proxy trees and bushes with actual tree/bush objects.

2. Nowhere to hide

Current previs version

Storyboard version showing how this section of road should look.

The ambush section bends and provides outcroppings that would give the characters a prominent place to rush to gain cover from the incoming sniper fire. That kink needs to be removed so that the characters must hide among the small boulders in their area.

This task looks like the most work, but if I just do a big cutout of the underlying terrain and use scatters to handle the cliff itself, it may not be much work.

3. A better rock

The rally points critical rock formation doesn't provide the cover that is intended for the scene. I need to make adjustments. Shouldn't be too hard, except I really don't like these scatter objects any more. I got a bit unspooled trying to rebuild the scatters rather than just resculpting the rock. Well have another go!

Typical weekend

 Was it a lazy weekend? Well, I didn't do very much. Battlefield 6 was offering double-XP, so it made sense to mindlessly waste all my time on that. But not all my time, really. I actually did some cool things.

I did a lot of scatter practice, as I want to do a really good job on the Blender 5.0 celebration render.

New terrain. Lots and lots of new terrains

Tres dark out there.  It's hard to see the biome test.

I played with GeoScatter's biome system. Biomes are a collection of ground scatter recipes that carefully layer different ground assets to produce an instant environment type. They are too resource-hungry to use on anything other than a tiny area of foreground. 

Biomes in a pot

From now on, I'll use this smallish pot (it's enormous, for a pot, but very small as a terrain) to test complex scatter collections and own-grown biomes.

A dry grass terrain (my own scatter collection)

Arid (Bagapie biome collection)

Customised biome

Customised biome

Another terrain and some of those wonky generative AI assets

This element looks pretty cool. I will generate some complementary elements to form a full Lovecraftian alien temple.

This week

Blender 5.0 Release Candidate

This will set the clock for the full release in the following week, unless something stinky turns up while testing. I will migrate some of my own work to 5.0, although project work, such as the Service Road, must remain on 4.5 LTS.

True Sky 3

Oh boy, this looks absolutely amazing, especially with the added sky physics and support for planets.

Layered clouds and a "projected planetary sphere"

Service Road

Complete the requested changes to the service road elements. Probably a day's work all in all.

Celebration Render

Complete the modelling and texturing of the egg house. Select a terrain and start dressing it. I had trouble testing BagaRiver addon. I might look into it as it looks like a great way to add a nice stream. This might be handled by Nature Generator; I'll consider that, too.

Back on the road, again

 I'm having a catch-up with the director this evening. It's time to deliver on my commitment to improve the current service road scene, ensuring it aligns more closely with the storyboard. 

Both walls

Running with Double Blender

Road to progress

 
I submitted an update on the service road. Some adjustments are required, but they're in the fine details; the overall effect was favourably received.

Back to work, damn it!

 
I need to complete the Service Road element but I keep finding excuses to play with World Creator -- which, in fact, just entered general release. Not a massive number of changes from the Beta. The cliff filter is no longer in an experimental category.

True-Vault asset tests

I wanted to do a scene that showcased the True-VFX  asset library available through their very cool new add-on, True-Vault. I still suck at scattering! But maybe I'm getting a bit better when I keep things simple and slowly build up.

Nature Generator cliffs. Nicey nice, yes?

Grass from the GraSSy knoll collection

Cameo by Bagapie's basic ivy

I'll go back to the service road on the next session, maybe tonight.

Service Road - another stretch

 This morning, I completed the first pass on the rock scatters on the "Sniper Alley" section of the service road.

Rocks from Nature Generator

Small scatters need to be improved.

Overview

Warning: End of Civilization!

 I lost a significant amount of productivity over the last couple of days, thanks to an impulsive decision to reinstall Civilisation V. What a terrible mistake. That game is such a driver of the "one more round" compulsion in me. I completed two full playthroughs and two games that were discarded or lost.

Some game time...

Best game so far!

I have somehow managed to play this game for many years with only a minimal understanding of the mechanics. This last game introduced me to elements such as deal-making with the city-states and the finer art of military conflict.

I was set upon by my imperialistic neighbours, Napoleon and Catherine the Great. I managed to hold out on their expansion and refused to sign any peace treaty. This appears to disrupt their strategy, as they ended up fighting each other instead of advancing their attack. Perhaps a kink in the AI was introduced to make the game less challenging? I concentrated on economic and technological growth until I had artillery, at which point you could sweep through any nation that was less developed. I ended up turning them both into rump states, taking possession of Paris, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. A long and drawn-out conflict that makes me realise that war is shit. In fact, I think I only won the game by not pursuing a maximal military victory and instead shifting my huge empire towards technological progress, allowing me to secure the space-race victory with a perhaps 20-round lead over the Ottomans.  

Mini-Project

Always respect the time-box. This probe (the lander element) was supposed to be a single-day/couple-of-sessions project. It wasn't to be. Note the space probe in the foreground is not my work, it's from the Big/Medium/Small Astronova collection. That stuff is absolutely mind-blowingly good, but too expensive for me to get the whole lot.

Next

I must complete the service road section and submit it, then begin work on the third section, which is quite large.

On the way to a quick Blender project...

 I started an entirely different quick Blender project.

I decided that I needed to finish my "pile of rocks" quick project, but that a chrome ball wasn't enough of a subject to justify the effort. What should go there, instead? A hard-surface model, a space probe!

I was eager to create a hard-surface model, so I began developing the idea of a lander/probe. I didn't bother to do any sketches; I got most of my inspiration from the escape pod that featured in the first Star Wars movie.

Thruster package

Propulsion Unit

Landing Leg. Meh!

I knocked together a set of landing legs. It was functional, but the design quality was poor. None of the components related effectively to any of the other parts. I decided to down tools and have another go this morning.

Much better

I finished off the session by cleaning up the scene, assigning basic materials and arranging the model elements more effectively, such as creating a set of landing legs in both the up and down positions. This lets you stage the probe in both configurations by turning one set off and the other on.

 Next...

Finish the model, adding details such as arms and sensor projections. Might I take inspiration from the probe droid from The Empire Strikes Back? We'll see!

And then...

Optimise the Tunnel section of the Service Road, then begin work on the next section.

A day for Odin

 Progress Report

I invested a considerable amount of time creating "hero" assets with Nature Generator. It's great, and it seems more stable than I first thought. 

Little rocky heroes

The only screaming limitation is the lack of a built-in material-baking tool. These assets are now plain meshes with the Nature Gen Geometry Node trees applied. Ready to share! However, the materials are still using the addon's procedural systems. To make these rocks easy to share, I'd need to turn the procedural results into PBR textures, which would require that the objects be given good UVs. I may run some tests to see if I can create a UV map for an object while maintaining the great texture results, and then use the baking tool I have from the Sanctus Library.

Quick practice scene

Service Road

I haven't forgotten about the tunnel section of the service road. I had put it off, as I thought the scatter step wasn't going to be much fun. Turns out it was okay.

From above - near cave entrance

View from within the cave

Overview

Next

That scene will need to be optimised. I used detailed assets because they give a much better sense of how much the tunnel is obscured, but at the cost of a very big scene -- about 1GB.

More Blender School! I have courses! I have the last section of the environmental design course to complete.

Mensis Septem

 We're here at the golden gates of autumn. Ready for 2025's final slog.

Over the weekend, I created the base meshes for the second stretch of the service road for the film project. I need to get proxy scatters in place. I should get this handed over in the next couple of days, then jump onto the third section, which is a bigger piece of work.

"The Tunnel"

Meet the anti-climax monster.

More time with Nature Generator

I've spent a bit more time learning some of the ins and outs of Nature Generator. I've been getting system hangs on start-up and after baking objects from the Geonode systems. It could be bugs with the addon, or it might be a coincidence. 

We experienced a very brief power cut on Friday, which caused my systems to shut down. I feared that I'd spend many hours getting my older system back up and running, but it only took a couple of minutes... phew!

Nature Generator Stuff

Nature Gen ground scatter on my existing test scene.

The Nature Gen ground scatters come with a ground layer which interferes with the scene's terrain. I think I managed to suppress it by manually tweaking the material's alpha channel.

Still great for baking procedural rock assets

I experienced crashes while creating multiple rocks and then baking them (applying the geonode tree).

Log message

> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)

> WARNING: Context is restricted!

> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)

> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)

> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)

> WARNING: Context is restricted!

> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)

> Info: Deleted 1 object(s)

Later crash log

>🧹 Removed asset library (4.0): Nature Generator Assets

>✅ Registered asset library: C:\Users\mark\AppData\Roaming\Blender
> Foundation\Blender\4.5\scripts\addons\The_Nature_Generator\asset_library

> register_class(...):

> Warning: 'TOT_MatB_UL_items' doesn't have upper case alpha-numeric prefix

> register_class(...):

> Warning: 'TOT_ImageResizer_UL_items' doesn't have upper case alpha-numeric prefix

> addon_utils.disable: ui_translate not loaded

> addon_utils.disable: viewport_vr_preview not loaded

> Error   : EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION

> Address : 0x00007FF6763FA082

> Module  : blender.exe

> Thread  : 00001ef0

> Writing: C:\Users\mark\AppData\Local\Temp\blender.crash.txt

Nature Gen is great for creating quick background terrains. To be fair, True Terrain is a lot more flexible, but I have a well-established workflow where I design my heightmaps and then work from there, rather than using True Terrain's terrain sculpting tools. Still, it's nice to have a set of parameters that are specifically tuned to terrain deformation rather than having to work out how different noise systems can mimic erosion, etc.

Two Nature Gen desert terrains with True Sky (3 minutes work)