Design Beautiful Outdoor Scenes

Mohsen Hashemi details his efficient workflow process for the creation of this photorealistic environment

Mohsen Hashemi

This render, inspired by Hrensko National Park in Czech Republic, was for me the next step to further my skills at producing 3D visualisations, and a great challenge on how to use tools more efficiently for archviz scenes. Although this project may seem like a very complex one, I will demonstrate just how easy we can create such a realistic result if we simply follow the right workflow process.

Special thanks to Wim Vanderschueren for help with this project.

01 MODEL THE ENVIRONMENT

This is often a challenging step, but I’d advise you to just think about what you need, and don’t exaggerate the process. In this project I modelled only the environment that was visible to the camera. I basically started with a simple plan, divided it into mid-range segments and made my basic environment with push and pull in 3ds Max. It may take time, but it’s the best and most optimised way of creating a terrain.

02 DISPLACEMENTS AND TEXTURES

As we made the basic terrain by push and pull, we may need to create more variety on surfaces with displacement to improve the realism. So, for this purpose, I started to make a simple ground texture with Quixel Mixer. As I guessed that most of the ground would be covered by ferns and bushes, I didn’t spend a huge amount of time making the texture, because I mainly needed the displacement. For the rocks close to the camera I used Megascans 3D rock models with high-res displacements to create a more natural, realistic look.

03 SCATTERING LIBRARY

We are now aiming to make our mountain-jungle environment look even more photoreal. I divided the environments with different colours, with each colour representing different species of plantlife. For greater variation, I made two types of scattering for some parts, using different settings for a more natural appearance.