Napoleon's final scene

[Hiju]

Hi,

Without further ado, Napoleon’s scene :

Few changes :
I didn’t create a tree but instead a rocky angular rock as I originally planned.
Napoleon has got a rework on the eyes/ears section, some puffy cheeks too
And glorious 720p/ 256 samples for the final render (took quite some time )

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Napoleon's plastic surgery

Before and after

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I’m happy to have completed this section ! I have learned so much:
+Sculpt mode is really cool.
+I begin to be more efficient on nodes (displacement on water/rock, math functions, mix mix and mix )
+Combing a virtual bunny feels awesome !
+Background image add more realism.
+The sapling tree generation is a nice feature.

-The only thing I had problem with was the grass, realistic grass is complicated + it slows my computer big time

I hope you like it, cheers !

[Sam_Hamsord]

Congratulations on completing section 6!
Nice work there, really like it.

Few things I wanted to point out:

+I begin to be more efficient on nodes

Don’t get too deep in it. A lot of things changed and yet more about to.
(In short(if I get it right) there is a new Principled BSDF.
one node to rule them all one node to find them… xD
A new more simple and automated system to create any material. Available in 2.79 and on, all the previous tutorials on nodes are obsolete and expired. You can do things old way, but that isn’t the right way any more, so be aware.)

+The sapling tree generation is a nice feature.
-The only thing I had problem with was the grass, realistic grass is complicated + it slows my computer big time

Blender Guru is shutting down his Nature Academy, main reason to that is lot of things have changed over years with Blender and there is a new ways of doing grass and other things better and quicker. Doesn’t makes things taught in this section wrong, main reason of this section wasn’t to teach you make good grass, trees, animals and environment but to introduce sculpting, particle system, working with images, etc.

realistic grass is complicated

Your grass lacks randomness. You had there a few quite impressive plant models, you just need to randomise their scaling, and rotation.

[Hiju]

there is a new Principled BSDF.

I’m actually working in 2.79 so I saw it and tested a little (metalic shader on the animated lamp), I think before the beginning of the next section I will have a more in-depth look about it.
And it will begin with watching your linked video, thanks about that

Your grass lacks randomness. You had there a few quite impressive plant models, you just need to randomise their scaling, and rotation.

You are right, I tried to add randomness but it reached a point where I wasn’t able to have a satisfying result (in my point of view) and I just kind of gave up in the end.

To give you an example:
I originally created 7 particles systems with a different type of grass each, and 5 different distribution (5 vertex group) and tried to randomize the location (Vertex group), scaling (Physics/Random size) and rotation (Rotation/Random). Something like this:

I experimented a whole day after Napoleon and the bush … But there wasn’t something I liked for the final scene and it began to bother me having that much particle systems to tweak numbers about…
So I gave up, reseted everything and created only 3 particle systems and 2 vertex group with higher numbers and went like “This will do, doesn’t look too bad”.

As I said, you are right about the randomness and I shall give it a try again, but for now I’m quite fed up with grass (pun intended)