Software used: Cinema 4D, Vray

Photo vs 3d

A photograph or a 3d as a background, isn't that always the question?

Photograph: It's technically easier to do, you just have to find the right one. Some adjustments in post and you're done. That's perfectly fine for one image. But, if there's going to be more than one shot, and different light conditions, then you run into trouble. Same thing for animations.

3d: It will probably take more time to setup. It leads to bigger file sizes, slower viewport performance and longer render times. And, it will never be as realistic as a photograph! But, you can change lighting, camera position and resolution to whatever you want without worrying about the background.

For me, 3d almost always wins. There are minor disadvantages in comparison to using photographs. Of course, there is no right or wrong. After all, creating 3d landscape is enjoyable. That's why I would like to share how to create one. I used Cinema 4D R19 (yes, R19 in 2022!) but, the workflow can be applied to any other version or software. So, let's get into it!

* Keep in mind that this "Making of" is about creating a believable background within reasonable parameters, keeping complexity to a minimum and flexibility to a maximum. It won't be perfect, especially if you look closer at the foreground, but as a background element, it's just fine.

Ingredients

All you need is a landscape object, ground textures and 3d plants.

Landscape

I recommend using a non-destructive workflow so you can change form and subdivision later on with just a few clicks. The idea is to get an interesting landscape with enough but not too much subdivision.

I also recommend staying within a realistic scale to avoid running into trouble with plant and texture sizes. Also, "physically accurate" render engines calculate on a real world scale.

I used a simple plane.



Then I added a Displacer Deformer to the plane, giving it an appropriate height. Falloff can be used to get it flatter on the border (this is optional).



The displacement itself is controlled in the Shading tab. Add a Noise Shader and turn it into a Layer. I chose Ober and increased Global Scale significantly. Then I played with the Seed number until I got something I liked.



To add more details, I put an additional Noise Shader on top of it. By changing blend mode and opacity, you can control how it will mix together. Here I chose Stupl Noise and adjusted Octaves and Global Scale.



Play with other Noise Shaders and blend modes to add even more details.

Material

Good textures are so often half the battle. I got them from www.textures.com. (Cliff Rock 3, Sandy Rock Soil and Sandy Soil 2) But of course, you can use others too.

Create a new Advanced Material and apply it to the Landscape Object. I used Cubic Projection and lowered Tiles to increase texture size, since this is a large scale model.

* While creating materials it's mostly enough to just place a basic sun. Don't use dusks or dawns, which create strong color casts, which can then lead to wrong setups. And, just use default render settings. Place a camera in an interesting position. I usually place an object near the camera to keep an eye on the scaling. I used a two meter cube here.



My goal is to have different textures on different slopes. The steeper, the rockier and, the flatter, the sandier. That's what Terrain Mask does. Choose Terrain Mask under Effects by clicking on the little arrow. Adjust as follows:



Turn it into a Layer. Load a Cliff and a Stones Texture and move the Terrain Mask between those two and change blend mode to Layer Mask. Black will use the bottom and white the top texture.



To blend them together I used a Filter to adjust the color of the cliff texture.



With the same technique I mixed a Sand texture with the Stones texture. I put the Stones texture into a Folder, so it wouldn't affect the previous created Terrain Mask.



Again, blending them together by adjusting Hue and Saturation with a Filter.



You can go crazy with layering and masking. It also helps hiding repeating patterns.

One thing is still missing. Create a Displacement Material to add final details. Add it with the same exact Projection and Tiles to the model. Make sure that the Displacement Material is placed before the other material is, so that it doesn't overwrite it.



Copy the layer structure from the previews material and paste it to the Displacement Material. Then just replace all the textures with the according height maps and you're done. To lower render time, deactivate Use global parameters and lower Edge length and Max subdivs values.

Vegetation

Finally, only vegetation is missing. This is rather straight forward. No secrets here. Using Cinema 4D's MoGraph. I kept it light by only using four different plants (three of them as a no leaf version).

Starting with some small grasses.



Adding small bushes.



And bigger bushes.



And finally some trees.



And here it is all together. A total of 39'332 objects.





* Make sure every MoGraph Cloner object uses a different Seed number. We could go much further using selections or other distribution plugins, like MultiCloner from Forester. Using a wider variety of plants and different leaves would make it even better. But, as a background element, I think it's totally acceptable.

Final

And here are some final shots.

Fin

And that's it.

I hope you have found some useful things here and there.

If there's anything missing, not mentioned or cutout on the screenshots then it means that I've used default values and settings. If you have any doubts or questions, please let me know in the comment section below.

Saludos