Forest Crystal - Stylized Diorama
This small stylized scene is a little practice exercise where I wanted to put together a diorama assembled from a few tech art experiments I've made on previous projects - the only custom built piece here is the base the crystal sits on, using a simple trimsheet.
The crystal itself is repurposed from a shader test I built to try out creating an effect of internal depth and reflection on the inner surface of the mesh, without sacrificing performance - I broke down my process step by step in a twitter thread here (https://twitter.com/3D_Stardust/status/1674835841263206410)
I created the foliage materials for the moss, grass and tree canopy last year as my first attempts at learning to build material functions and parameterize material attributes.
The rocks are repurposed from another experiment where my aim was to create a rock material with maximum reusability and customization - I have a more in depth breakdown of that material in my Whalebone Cove project which grew out of that initial experiment.
Trimsheet basecolour map for the stone platform (2048)
Trimsheet normal map (2048)
AO/RGH/MTL were packed into an RGB texture (1024)
The grass material has a tiling noise texture overlay on top of the basecolour to add colour variation
One of the tree materials in the scene adds moss from the ground level upward across the mesh, controlled by a worldposition gradient and custom noise mask parameters
I used the trees as an opportunity to improve my skills at handpainting in Substance
The tree canopy foliage material allows me to add an alternate colour gradient across all the canopy meshes, allowing for different colour options on each material instance
Foliage master material, containing a worldposition function I built as a tech art personal project
Moss master material containing the worldposition gradient function, different masking options in a packed RGB mask, and fuzzyshading controls for extra colour variation
Parameters for the moss decals
I used postprocessing to reduce overall brightness and exposure without sacrificing colour vibrancy, and set a soft daylight lighting tone