ghiblinspired3d

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Blog41 Main Project: Extra stuff

To give a little bit more of flavor I add moving leaves in the floor

and a plane that contains a curtain that is moving with the wind flrom speedtree

the inside of the house is a plane that contain a cube map

And I did a 3D kiki for perspective purposes

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Blog40 Main Project: Particles, and moving materials.

So, for the butterflies

I want to give thanks to (Alam, 2025) thanks to his amazing breakdown of the butterflies material I was able to create the material for them.

I make my own texture for the butterflies so they resemble the ones from the reference

The Niagara system wasn't mine; it was from this person: (CodeLikeMe, 2024)

After that I follow this tutorial for doing smoke I tryied to add alinear node to mmake the changes of the top of the smoke less obvious but it help as an slider for making the smoke disappear.

The other particle I add to the scene is the easyatmos, that to add the leaves, I change the texture of the leaf to fit the new atmosphere

I also tried to change the normals of the leaf to look more flat.

References:

Alam, R. (2025). The Deserter - VFX Showcase + Breakdowns - UE5, Rafiul Alam. [online] ArtStation. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/1x5nLe [Accessed 18 Aug. 2025].

CodeLikeMe (2024). Blender to Unreal Vertex Animated Butterfly Static Mesh Particle Effects Tutorial. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0op34diYdo

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Blog39 Main Project: Decals, fog and suttle rimlight

Mostly I just put decals to fake some lighting form the scene

Without decals:

Mostly I use them in these areas

I prefer them rather than a light because I didn't want the lighting surrounding other areas and I use them more like a subtle bump like for details in the ivies in the corner of the house to separate the planes a extra notch to fit better with the reference picture.

The other things that I did to have a nice changes in the picture was things like a local fog volume. I wanted to use the normal fog volume, but it was too intense for my scene, but luckily, I ended up finding the local height fog thanks to a classmate and this is the before and after:

Before local fog:

After local fog:

The painting also has like a subtle rimlight color blue at the edge right of the house so that is the final light to add more to the scene

Before spotlight:

After spotlight:

Now let's appreciate how it all looks together seeing how the scene with look without any of them.

Without anything

With everything

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Blog38 Main Project: The HDRI Upsi

So, I mess up my entire scene, this is because I wanted to put the HDRI and I was so close and then I don´t know why I erase the HDRI mesh, so I look around for how to install it again, and I couldn't find another way but to erase and reinstall UE5.

I did a copy of my scene in case of something happened and then I install UE5 again and after I open it, I realizes something.

All the color of my scene were gone,

The scene out of nowhere was looking like this. And it makes scene as I reinstalled UE5 because I needed to reset the assets that were found in the HDRI, the problem is that it also reset the SpeedTree master material. This makes loose so much time of my project. But Why was it the case? Well, it was because I modified the SpeedTree master material directly from the plugin, I was in the mistake that since I modified the material it will respect my changes and they will become embedded in my scene, but I was sadly mistaken. So, I lost an entire day fixing my problem.

Me suffering because of the problem.

But know I know that I have to make a copy if I want to modify a plugging node of set plugging

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Blog37 Main Project: The HDRI making

I am reaching the end of the project, and this means the final details. for that one off the thing that I already want to do to make a more complete scene is putting a HDRI.

For that I could use the previous photoshop file

So this was my previous image for moving the clouds

Since I will not use it to move the texture with a panner anymore I make something so it could be usable in an adobe scene.

I put a gradient to change the colors, I make it, so it is tillable and even I transform it as a patter in photoshop.

After that I put a ground color material, so it has the green fade

And this texture is the one that ultimately put in the HDRI

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Blog36 Main Project: Final lighting passes, values in black and white.

Even with all the changes that I make to the ppv I still received comments about the values of the project. like this one.

So, I decided to not push anymore these problems to the side and make a proper photoshop document so I can change the values of things like foliage and then see how they are compared to the original pciture.

All of that where the screenshots of the photoshop document. And all of them are for making sure the values are correct

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Blog35 Main Project: Most difficult foliage, make stylized trees in SpeedTree prt4

The second part was more difficult as I had to change the parameters of the leaves in SpeedTree. It was getting so frustrating that I was thinking to do the canopy in blender, although that was my final option as I wanted to have all the foliage made in SpeedTree.

And I wanted to use blender because in the video they have the leaves around a circle. But that finally gave me an idea for something that I used for the ivies and moss for the house.

Meshes, I have a mesh that I used for the canopy, I wanted to use that mesh for the shape control, but it wasnt working the way I hope for, So I did what I did for growing the Ivy and I put the canopy mesh in the object and use that as a base for the leaves to grow.

Base:

Leaves following the canopy:

And with that I finally have much better-looking canopies for the tree.

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Blog34 Main Project: Most difficult foliage, make stylized trees in SpeedTree prt3

Is very fitting that without I plan for it, my first ever foliage that I make for the scene, the birch tree, was also the final foliage that I make for the scene. Third time is the charm and with the third version of the tree it finalizes my journey with SpeedTree in this project.

So, this asset sent me to SpeedTree again full circle. So, what I did to make it more stylized. Well two things, mostly I kind of follow this tutorial. (Zavhorodnia, 2023).

First, when I said that I change the shape of the leaves I change them to this alpha:

But the leaves when far away still look like planes, so I have to do more visible the separation like in the ones of the videos.

So, I change the alpha of the trees like these:

To get in comparison the difference between my first branch that I did for the birch alpha

References:

Zavhorodnia, V. (2023). Stylized Tree Tutorial. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvKWDkKSWnQ&list=PLHdvtrK5plj9OjIdO2XJXDJjq-_9VHbjG [Accessed 18 Aug. 2025].

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Blog33 Main Project: Most difficult foliage, make stylized trees in SpeedTree prt2

So, we were here:

The trees where already approved once in feedback, but I still wasn't convinced, this is when having all the changes in the scenes became a blessing and how feedback in all the lifetime of your project becomes really amazing to have.

As having change almost all the foliage of the scene where change at that moment the problems oof the scene became more evident, and that problem was the trees.

I already wasn't fully convinced by them but then online and in the review with my teacher Eden I have the same feedback of changing them, and that that was the most distractor factor on my scene.

So, I knew at that moment that the final key component that will create a huge change in my scene is to change the trees to make them fully stylized.

But I was already using a very stylized leaf, and I was already changing the normals, so how I can push the stylization further?

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Blog32 Main Project: Most difficult foliage, make stylized trees in SpeedTree

The trees have three different meshes, like 5 versions that I am creating while modifying the previous meshes to try to making fit the scene.

So, at the start I put my most realistic type of tree. I knew that I was going to modify this version of the tree since the moment I created it as I wanted to make the birch tree to be the first foliage that I made for the scene.

And it could be seen here what the problem was, like with all my previous foliage, that it was too realistic, making the scene to noisy.

So, it was fine, I was thinking that changing the tree will be easy as I just have to make the cluster of leaves change to only leaves to make it more stylized instead of using a prober branch texture, right?

Wrong I was very wrong, so first I change it like this,

The leaf in this version has less noise the shadows also don't feel so harsh and the separation of elements between the house and the background more noticeable. but they still look weird, so online I wanted to search for answers of how to modify the trees further and my teacher Neil as well as people in discord agreed that I have to modify the normals of the trees.

So with the method of (iamNikitaBelous, 2023) and (Arif Pribadi, 2015) I manage to get this result that stays in the scene for a long time of the making of the project.

References:

iamNikitaBelous (2023). GitHub - iamNikitaBelous/Sphere_Normals_Transfer: Blender Python script for transfering normals from sphere to tree. [online] GitHub. Available at: https://github.com/iamNikitaBelous/Sphere_Normals_Transfer [Accessed 18 Aug. 2025].

Arif Pribadi (2015). small guide to Do Fluffy Tree with Unreal. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX75IW_RafQ [Accessed 18 Aug. 2025].

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Blog31 Main Project: Major problem UV mapping into HP meshes

So, I was thinking that the flowers that I make after the stylization was okay but there is something that I didn't fully think about it, making more HP meshes for my flowers, i was thinking that the most efficient way of saving the mesh is just to make it a crossed texture as it will be a very optimized foliage.

The most that I change was some flowers that where close to the camera. So I didn't think much about it when then later, I receive more comments like this.

I kind of knew it. as the snapdragon texture was the most visually fake of them all, I didn't want to fix it however because at that time I already have finish changing all the foliage textures. So, it meant that I have to change the snapdragon for a third time.

There was just one problem tho, my mesh had already has uvs... on the HP version, and because of the quantity of flowers, if I want to use a flower like that a single flower would make this quantity of polygons

This making the mesh polygons ten times bigger than the polygons of the house, so, what I have to do is to retopo, but at this time of the project there was no time for something like that. Thankfully Wayne new a technique that could save me

Thankfully Wayne knew the answers to my problems while using Zbrush I send the HP that has the UV

So I had to decimated in Zbrush by using decimation master I put the decimate percentage in 3 and after that:

From 142905 polygons the polycount reduced its amount to 1090. And it still has morph its uv

After that I put a smooth by angle modifier in blender and after that is already set to use the same textures as my HP models.

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Blog30 Main Project: Troubleshooting with the ivy foliage.

Before entering in more details about the problems that I have with the normal foliage there was one that was different from the rest, that being the ivy and moss for the house.

Here I tried a experiment with moss on top of the house and ivy. I wanted to create a fluffier roof like the one in the picture, so this was an initial test for that

At first, I wasn’t sure if I should sculpt every leaf or use a tiling texture with opacity. In the end, I decided to make modular ivy cards and use Unreal’s material system to blend with a moss material.

The trick here was using masks to create variation between the clusters, so even though the geometry is repeated, the color shift from the UE5 material makes it feel more natural. This also helped me avoid the flat wallpaper look.

So, when I change it, I make it so they are significantly less ivy and moss cards, so they blend better together with the texture and create less noise.

Another thing that helps for reducing the noise is that I also created another ivy cluster instead of depending on ivy in the ivy leaf card

I’m happy with how the ivy frames the house because it balances the composition — it guides the viewer’s eye up from the flowers to the roofline. It was definitely one of the assets that took me the longest, but it gives so much life to the house.

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Blog29 Main Project: Doing the color of the foliage using smart materials

For the flowers I bake the HP and with that I created a base smart material for all the flowers in the scene, so it already has a stylized base to work with, this was to accelerate the process and so every foliage is cohesive between them.

Also, for the leaves I have a similar material in which it creates the lines for the leaves and gradients

but still there is a lot of things to modify but I am gratefull that I make it that way as I peed a lot the process

So even if all the textures look hand paint they are all in reality painted by using procedural methods inside substance painter.

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Blog28 Main Project: Making of the foliage, trials and tribulations.

So, for all the foliage I made the 3D meshes, I was told by Santiago that they use more substance designer for making the petals and leaves but at that time I already had the 3D models of the plants, so I continue like that.

This are all the high poly that I have of the flowers, I made de base in blender then send it to Zbrush

Here I used this method from (Maxime Forveille, 2021) to make a flower all with just one petal. Then I put the flower in the program, at this stage of the process I didnt care of how heavy it was since I was going to make the texture crossed.

Like this

After that I proceeds to take a material from the viewport. and later I put it in the cossed section that way I could make a LP of the floer or a low LOD

This process gives me unforeseen consequences. And because of that I had to change a lot of things in the future for this assets

References:

Maxime Forveille (2021). Make a Flower in less than 5min with ZBrush. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8gkgdOGvzA [Accessed 18 Aug. 2025].

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Blog27 Main Project: SpeedTree changes

As my previous blogs says I knew that I have to start stylizing the foliage on my scene, but I didn't know how.

I don't regret making the plants look more realistic at the start, because it helps me a lot in my understanding of Speedtree a lot of tutorials are for realistic foliage so for starting to comprehend the software it was amazing.

So here is the comparison, of how they look some of the new plants with the modifications that I said in the first blog, applying all the techniques that I saw in Genshin impact for 3D stylized foliage. And as one can see is easier to the eye and less noisy to do the foliage this way.

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Blog26 Main Project: Post Processing volume

Post Processing was really needed; at the point my project was in the first layout I was thinking that maybe I didn't need to change the lighting that much as in the video the only lighting that it could be seen is a simple directional light.

I could not be further away from the truth, as many people pointed out that my shadows here too harsh in comparison with the shadows of my reference.

More examples of people pointing it out:

So I had to change my PostProcessingVolume to change the scene as not only external people from the university pointed out this but also my teachers, special thanks to Wayne.

Thanks to that the problem of my shadows got fixed a little bit more

Still, I have some fail experiments, like when I make the light orange

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Blog25 Main Project: Why this changes and visual comparison.

I had problems with changing the speedtree master but overall I decided that that was the better option for me for the time available that I have in order to finish this project. One of the problems tha I have and I have to think about it in the future wheen I needto render the videos is the fact that using the computer of the uni for rendering will be imposible as they dont allow to change pluggging related materials, so i am stuck rendering in my computer otherwise the renders without all the changes that I make to the textures will look like this.

Comparing to when I ave all the changes that I make to the material the difference is night and day.

All the shadows increasily less noisy, the bushes all have different colors in order to blend easily with the grass,and the plants all have color variation, with that being said. Why then I didnt choose to do the changes of the foliage material in a new material, and then attach the foliage to the material that doesnt require special permits to change it making so it disappears when you open the UE5 project in another computer?

Well it is all becasue time, conveniance and speedtree wind.

Convenience since all the foliage exported from speedtree will automatically be already attach to the material. Making you save time from connecting each textures in unral and the speedtree wind is already integrated to the material meaning I would nt have to createa wind sistem for every single one of the foliages