Trying again to make my castle in the snow mountains

Works in Progress
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Been off and on trying this for years. Snow and hair have to be the hardest things in 3d.

I cannot get a mountain that looks good close up and far away if I wanted still images of both or to fly in to.

I cannot get snow and rock textures in same model.

I am spending way too much time on this mountain and not the castle.

I still don’t know what I want it to look like but have a general idea.

The first image is of the mountain bit that I am altering. It had a lot of triangles but I changed to quads and it lowered the amount of stuff. I thought to get all textures and junk working on this piece then duplicate. You can see how the texture is stretched. Don’t remember where I got texture.

The last picture is of the pieces together with a placeholder castle that is going to be replaced with a model of the Geribaldi castle from Russia or wherever.

Really am getting quite annoyed. I have wanted to do this castle because of a story I had wrote. I dont know if I want to do animation or just a fly by or just glamor pictures to print out but I do know I have been working on this, hair, and trying to get an armature to deform a human mesh realistically and not understanding how FOR YEARS OFF AND ON NOW WITH NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT. And I am really mentally exhausted. It is like I am getting nowhere. I have to learn everything to do it by hand since there is no tutorial or easy solution.

Like the armature thing. Yes, there is now a really great DAZ to Blender bridge software and yes, I can now import human characters and have all the keyshapes and whateverallelse it is that makes it deform nicely like in the DAZ program (I have been importing Daz characters through regular export import and having to build armature. I like their figures and realistic textures and this saves me from having to build my own) BUT you cannot edit the mesh like if you wanted to change the face or add horns or elf ears or whatever. You can edit the mesh all you want if you just export/import BUT then you have to become an expert in rigging because you have to build your own. Years later I learn there is something called corrective shapekeys but still, no tutorials that are worth a damn and I still can’t get the same quality of deformations or posing whateveryouwannacallit that you can get in Daz.

Pain in the ass.

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According to me , you have a wrong approach.

First you should block the scene out and decide what you want to actually do.

These steps can really help-

1.Import the main castle model or model it(because you already have the mountain mesh done)

2.Place the camera in the scene wherever you like , setup the camera angle , focal length, animate it ,etc.

3.Now & only now start working on materials and because you have setup your scene , you can actually see how relevent is the mountain to the camera. Shade it accordingly.

Suppose you are using depth of field or camera is quite near to the castle or very far , then you don’t even need to pay much attention to the mountains.

-> You can also just project a texture to the mountain , by just going in camera view , and unwrapping with project from view.

Here are some tutorials that I thing will be helpfull

This has happened to me , you try to make a secondary thing perfect , but in the end you see , its not even in focus or its not even 10% of the image . So its better to first plan out stuff and complete the scene,animate the camera ,etc.

I don’t know much about rigging so , I can’t comment on it.

This approach is not always correct but I think this can work in your case.

Finally all I want to say is, Its rather better to produce a mediocre piece then not producing anything.

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OMG, this was so cool I had no idea there was a snow app in Blender. I had looked at so many tutorials on mountains and did snow with particle systems.

Part of me is thinking this is cool another part is like ‘but I don’t like all this press a button and the work is done for you.’ in my opinion that is not talent or skill nor is it art. I worked for my skills as an artist with paint and pencil and it makes me mad when I see videos of people who don’t know anything just tracing and filling in. I feel something of the same with all this ‘push button don’t work for it don’t understand it just consume’ society we have.

I look at art and wonder if the person really had skills or just a bunch of apps that did it for him/her.

But this will help me a lot at least I can have rocks peeking from under the snow in areas. And I can study the shaders to understand how it works.

Any ideas on hair? Cloth realism? getting the bricks on my castle to look more old and grungy? I don’t know how to combine textures. I forgot how to use those grunge overlay things to put fingerprints or coffee cup rings on stuff, lol.

?

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I wanted to reply to this a while ago , but I did not have a chance too. Also had to think about what I wanted to say. The simple truth is I feel frustration all the time, I don’t get to make things as much as other people at the moment and I feel a sort of I am being left behind feeling. Everyone is still learning , but I accomplish so little in the time that I get. It is not a easy feeling to overcome so I can kind of relate. Its just a mindset that you have to overcome, and one thing that actually helps me is I will get into a project, if for some reason it doesn’t work out , I put a hold on said project and work on another goal. I set goals that kind of lead back to said main goal. so instead of working on mountains and a castle, I would isolate things in that scene and think of what I could make in the mean time that relates , so if I was stuck on the castle , I would make a like old stone bridge or a well. The mountains, I would just try to make one or two mountains with like a sunset and practice camera shots or something like that, maybe even a low poly one for learning the camera.

I am a firm believer of learning from the ground up, the basics gradually increasing. I don’t usually use Addons that do everything for you. But they are helpful, I think you should know how to do said thing before using a addon to do it for you and then I am ok with it. Some addons I feel should be a essential part of Blender also. I also mostly use addons that benefit the use of blender not really just doing something for me. there is a place for addons, but you really should know how it works incase it messes something up then you can fix it pretty easily. Not everything works out of the box.

So you just have to stick with it one way or another, there are tons of resources for Blender , all you really have to do is just ask google, usually you will find something to help or give you a idea how you could do it. Also keep a WIP going , it will help you keep track of what you are tryin to accomplish and you will recieve encouragement to help keep you pushing forward. I hope some of this maybe helped you, if not either way keep pushing forward and good luck, Can’t wait to see your creations.