Create Realistic Looking Mountains in Blender

1. Trailer: This course will teach you everything you need to know about 3D environments in Blender. Lot of people, when they tried to make 3D environments, they end up with a result that looks like this. I don't want you to get such results and my mission is to help you with that. This course will teach you everything about how to make epic through the environments in Blender. And I mean, every day, what are the different approaches to create 3D environments? What do we mean by displacement? How to make something look realistic and get results like professionals, how to understand nodes and build complex materials easily like the one you see it right now. Lighting, compositing, rendering layers, cycles versus EV and more. We will demystify all of those topics once and for all in a way that you will never have to struggle with them again from creating hot deserts, deep oceans do huge snowy mountains. We get them all net only when you finish this scores, you will end up with a solid understanding of how to make your environments look so in gorgeous. But you will learn along the way some really valuable informations and tricks that you won't find anywhere else. And that will take your skills to the next level. So even though this course might sound like it has just about 3D environments, it is just a topic that will help me explain a lot of things, but don't get me wrong. I'm not going to give you fish. I'm going to teach you how to fish so that by the end of the scores, you will be able to create whatever you have in mind. This course is built from the ground up to suit whatever your level in Blender, we will explain everything in detail that you understand exactly what we're doing. And most importantly, why in the first place, this scores is not just about showing you the buttons to hit, but most importantly, why am doing whatever I'm doing and what is my thought process along the way, which I think is the most valuable skill that you can develop. So basically the scores is a really tasty pastor for all the beginners out there with some spicy sauce on top for the ones who are looking for some advanced stuff and wanted to take their 3D renders to the next level. There is a value in this scores for everyone no matter your level and simply it will just blow in your mind. Now if all of that sounded exciting to you, believe me, this scores will be a huge investment in your 3D skills that you will never regret. Trust me and dad enough for me for this video, and it is time to talk to you all and saw the course. Yeah, go down. 2. Studying References: Hello and welcome everyone in the mountain chapter where it is kind of self-explanatory, we will be creating a mountain. But only thing is that most of the approaches that you will find in the internet or image-based processes, which means that you need some sort of software to create a texture that you will displace it or actually you will use it to displace a plane which will give you the look of a mountain. In our case, actually, we will be creating the whole thing in 100% all in sign of blender, which means that this workflow will be like really intensive in terms of like nodes and shading and all of that, as you probably remember in previous videos, because I mentioned it every single time, the cheapest way to achieve photorealistic results is to study a couple of references. And here are the references that I have gathered. The thing is I didn't find like really close shot to what I exactly want to create. But I feel like this image and this image are the closest to the thing I have in mind. Basically they will be like really high mountain peaks. Probably will fly close to them. And we will have some sort of a look in terms of color that is similar to this, like this blue and cyan look the only reason I've gathered also these images because they do have a certain field or a mood. I really liked this sunset look that I ended up abandoning this look because it is just so hard to achieve such results in Blender. Then also there is this one which is like all covered in clouds and all of that. We might also actually create some clouds and all bad in our Shawn, just to make it a little bit more dramatic and all of that, the most important thing is that if you notice that we will have a similar workflow as we did in the desert because there are primary details which is like the big shape of the, basically of the rocks are actually of the big rocks of the mountains. And then we need to add more and more details to them like the different trucks and the texture that isn't the rocks. And then we need to put snow over it. So there will be a lot of procedural working throughout this chapter. You can study these reference images because they already come shipped with the course. So we're trying to guess what kind of features you should focus on and what are basically the big features that we need to focus on. So that would give the illusion like, Hey, this is actually a mountain. Maybe actually before you start following this chapter, you might want to try actually to create this environment because here's the thing, all the techniques that we will be using in this video, or actually throughout this chapter, most of them are really similar, just like more complex than we did in the desert chapter. If you really understand it hasn't shared through, you should be ready to go to a certain extent. Guess how we will create the environment or this mountain without any further I do looking forward to see your results and I will see you in the next video where we will basically start creating these procedural mountain. See you there. 3. Scene Preparation: Hello and welcome. In this video, we will basically start by preparing our blender for the mountain that we will create. Of course, as usual, I will delete the light and the cube x Delete and first things first, I'm going to my render settings. I will change from EV two cycles. And for the feature set this time we will be using micro displacement. So I will change from supported experimental for the device as you probably already guessed it. If you have a decent GPU card, make sure to change it from CPU, just change it to GPU compute so that you can use your graphic card and therefore you will get faster renders for your viewport max samples. I will change it to something like 32. I don't need a lot of details and for the render settings, I will like keep it the way it is for now. I might just change it later when I will be rendering my scene. Now I will go to my 3D viewport, hit Shift a to add a new object, and I will add a plane. We will be creating a mountain. Mountains are huge. So I will open this menu and change the size of from two meters. I will just change it to one hundred, ten hundred meters, basically one kilometer wide, which is more suitable, I think for the mountain that we will be creating. One thing that you'll notice if you zoom out There is some sort of clipping going on how to fix that. Open this menu from here, make sure to go to View. And right here you will have end and it is basically 1 thousand meter. So blender won't see anything that is far higher than basically 1000 meters. So we need to change this and let's just add 10, so it become 10 thousand meter. And bam, now we can see all of our plane, which is good. I will hit End to hide the sidebar again. And for this, I will hit the tab key to enter into the edit mode right-most button. And you will have an option called sub-divide, which it is self-explanatory. It will subdivide your mesh or your face. In this case, I will hit Subdivide. And for the number of cuts, I will actually pump it to the maximum number, just 100. And you will have this a tab again to exit. So right now we have like a really huge plane and at the same time it is like basically subdivided. So we do have enough geometry in displaying to displace it the way we want. Go to your Modifiers tab. I will go to Add Modifier and add a subdivision surface. As I mentioned before, we will be using adaptive sampling. So I will just check adaptive subdivision and make sure like to just change it to simple because that's what we need change do you render view? And from here I had this small arrow. And because everything is gray right now, we need basically to add some lighting to our scene. And the easiest way is basically to uncheck the scene world, which Blender will basically use one of these HDRI that are right here. I would like probably just switch to this brutes and rise because I used it before and it looks pretty sick. I will bring this menu like this. I might zoom out like this. If you want to hide all the overlays and the grid and all of that, you can probably just click on this, this, and this way you will have only you're playing visible without any sort of things that might distract you from your plane. And that will change this editor, which is basically by default, it is actually the timeline. I will change it to the shader editor because that's the main editor that will allow us to create the displacement we want. I will hit New and that we'll call this mountain. The last thing that you need to do is basically to go to your material properties which are right here. If you go down, you will have an option called settings right here. Click on it and you will have an option called displacement. By default, Blender will just like you use displacement which is like Bump only. You need to change from bump only to displacement and bump. And that's basically it. One last thing, make sure to rename this to something like mountain by double-clicking on the name and I will type Mountain. Yeah, and that's basically how we prepare our scene for the mountain that we will create. I will see you in the next video. Bye everyone. 4. Mountains Base Form: Hello everyone. In this video, we will create the base of our mountain. As I mentioned in the previous video, we will be using the micro displacement features inside of blender, which means that we will need some sort of displacement data that we will feed to our displacement socket here in the material output, I won't be focusing right now on the colors and the shading and all of that. What I want basically to do in the next couple of videos is to nail the shape of this mountain and to create the base of our mountain, we will need displacement. As I just said, I will just collapse this for now. I will take this right here. I might also drag this just like this. So I have more space to work in my shader and I might zoom out. And as I mentioned, we need some sort of displacement data. And to edit, we will need a displacement node. Go Shift a to add a new node and look for displacement. After doing this, I will plug the displacement into the displacement. I won't be seeing anything because right now I'm not on the render view, so I will change to the render view from the top, and that will keep it the way it is for now to create the base of our mountain, we will be using different textures, mainly the Voronoi texture. So I will go shift a. Now we'll look for voronoi texture because we're using Node Wrangler Control Shift and click on the node to preview it. And that's how our Voronoi texture looks like right now, I will change the type from F1, which looks something like this, to distance the edge, which I think it is more similar to the way like the peaks of mountains are distributed on the surface of Earth. And just to make the whole result looks better, I think I will drag the scale way, way down to something. Let's say like, Let's try 0.1. Let's try for example, 0.05. I will keep it just like this for now. You might say, hey, why it is just like some sort of gray color. We need to scale down this whole texture so that we see the pattern that we will use. I'd actually know, you will see what I mean just in a second. After this, I will add the math nodes, Shift a and look for mass and just put it right here. And that will change the type from add to multiply. Some people might ask me why you're using a math note, even though I explained this point before, but just like remind you why basically instead of me later on, when I'm like trying to change the different values of all the different nodes instead of like twinkling with two values. Basically, by controlling this value, I will be changing the intensity of this Voronoi texture without bothering myself, changing plenty of different values and losing myself like basically just an experimenting with different values. So this multiply node or actually less math node will allow me to do such thing. And this slider basically with control the intensity of this Voronoi texture. And I think that the value of 0.5, which is basically means health, will probably drag it a little bit down to something like 0.2. Now, I will mix this entire setup with another Voronoi texture shift a look for voronoi again, put it right here, Control Shift and click on it to preview it. I will leave all those different settings the way they are except actually I'm going to put the same number right here. So I will maybe put like just 0.05 and I need to mix this with this to mix nodes, a lot of you will just think, hey, just use the mixed RGB. But remember we're having like black and white data coming out of the setup and the black and white data coming also from this setup. And the best way like to mix black and white values, it is basically by just using math, like multiplying them, subtract them and all of that, it won't make a big difference, but just in a logical way, I feel like it makes more sense. Shift a look for math. Let's just put it right here. And I will take this value and put it in the first socket. And Blender will automatically move the socket, or actually the input that is coming out of this Voronoi texture will automatically move it to the second socket. If we hit Control Shift and preview this node, which actually already it is hooked to the viewer, so we're good to go. And I actually, I want to take this value and plug it into the height. If we preview right now our principle be SDF to see what's happening, Control Shift and click on your principle. Be SDF. Nothing much is happening because we don't have a lot of displacement going on. So here's what we're gonna do. We will basically need to change the contrast of this entire setup. I will take all of these nodes right here and how to control the levels of contrast and all of that. A lot of you are like basically scream, Hey, just use the color ramp. And actually no, we will not be using the color ramp. We will use the RGB curves just because it gives us more freedom. Shift a and just look for RGB Curves and just put it right here, Control Shift and click on it to see what's going on. And I might just take this point and put it something like this. So it is basically becoming sort of like darker. That's looking pretty good. I think if we preview our principal BSD FOE now Control Shift and click on it, that's the result we've got. The main reason we're not seeing that much going on, on the surface because we don't have like some sort of data to tell blender where to put or how to map those two textures on the surface, what is the node that allows us to tell blender where to put everything on the surface. It is basically the combination of a texture coordinate with a mapping node. I will select one, these two textures, and I will hit Control T. And because I'm using the Node Wrangler add-on, it will automatically add the texture coordinate with the mapping node, take this output, which is the vector, and also plug it to the vector of the second texture and change the texture coordinate because it used to be generated right now, change it to Object and slammed right here. And you will see this basically happening. So I need to change the scale right here. Let's maybe bring it a little bit down. Let's try 0.1. I will keep it like this for now. Probably a lot of you will just say, Hey, nothing much changed. But actually it is, the last thing I'm gonna do is basically to select this entire setup. It Control G to group them, hit F2 to rename this group, and let's call it base mountain and hit enter. One small thing I wanted to mention, because probably a lot of you want to see the results right now and not basically just work on a gray plane. All we have to do is basically to zoom on your displacement node and you will have here an option called scale. Just make sure if you start bumping the scale, you will start seeing the results. The problem is because our plaintiffs sue a huge rule, probably need to input some big numbers. So I will recommend for you to plug 200. And that's actually the number that I will plug later on because one of the thing I realized probably not a lot of people like they are usually used to not seeing the results and assuming how it will look like. So at least for you to have some sort of visual feedback, make sure to plug 200 for now and later on, I will show you the right way on how to change the scale. Let's basically it everyone for this video, I will see you in the next one where all the work we just did will make more sense when we start creating the rocks. See you there. 5. Rocks Variation 1: Hello everyone. This is where we stopped last time and as I mentioned, we will create the first variation of the rocks that will populate the surface. This is the texture that we finished with in the last video Control Shift and click on the RGB curves to see it. This is the texture. And in this video basically we will start creating the rocks. Now as probably a lot of you will assume, I will use a Voronoi texture to create the illusion of rocks and that I want. So I'll just zoom below the base mountain. I will go shift a search and look for voronoi texture and make sure to take this vector socket out of the mapping note and plug it all sort of vector control shift to preview this node, it will look something like this. And I guess I will change the type from F1, the distance to edge. It looks like some sort of noise right now because of the scale is pretty high, so I need to lower the scale. Let's see, 0.2. That's kind of a lot. I think Let's try 0 for the double. Yeah, I think this looks kind of good for the effect that we're looking for. Going back to the trick that I always use, adding a math node behind this to control us later. Shift a mass it right here and change this operation from add to multiply and maybe also lower this value a little bit. Let's say 0.3. Right now, I will mix it as Voronoi texture with some other noise textures. So to do this, Let's go Shift a and instead of the Voronoi texture, I will look for noise texture, Control Shift and click on the node to preview it. It looks like some sort of black clouds. Let's bring the scale a little bit down. Let's say something like 0.4. And actually I forgot to plug it into this mapping setup. So I would just take it like this, put it right here for the detail. I will keep it 24. The roughness also, I guess I'm gonna just leave it at 0.5, but I feel like I need more contrast in this texture. So what is the best way to control that? Basically by adding a color ramp, shift a color ramp, and just put it right here. Blender will automatically block it between those different basically sockets. Let's drag this flagged as something, let's say until we start getting the result we're looking for, Let's just put it 0.45, almost the health. And for the white flag, I will drag it something like, let's say just 0.55. And yeah, that's looking actually pretty good. I think let's add another instance of this noise texture. So go shift a noise. Here's a general trick. Instead of like basically trying to capture the socket and you might not be able to do that because it is so small, there is an easier way to do that because we're using the Node Wrangler add-on. There is a really handy shortcut that we can use, which is if you hit Alt and click with the right-most button on the node holding the Alt key. Notice that what will happen, basically the Node Wrangler add-on will allow you to plug this node with any node that you select from here. So I want to plug this, the noise texture hit Alt right-most button on this node, the mapping node and just drag the circle to the noise texture and release and Blender will automatically know that because the output of this node is a vector, data will automatically plug it into the vector of the noise texture. This shortcut we will use a lot because we don't want basically to keep navigating or zooming out just to connect to like really distant notes. I will zoom again on my nose texture and maybe Control Shift and click on it to see how it looks like. And the first thing I guess I'm gonna do is basically to lower this value to something like 0.1. It looks like clouds. Again, I will keep the detail, roughness and distortion the way they are. And I will add a color ramp, node, color ramp, and put it right here for the white flag, I will maybe drag it to something like, let's say 0. I guess I'm just gonna plug the same value, which is 0.45. And for this one I will plug also the same value of 0.55 and it will look something like this. I kinda like it. The last thing that we get to do is basically to mix these length three textures together. I will mix it the noise texture together. Then I will add the third one, which is the Voronoi texture. We do have black and white dietetic coming out of these two outputs. So it will make more sense to use a math node to mix them, shift a mass. Let's put it right here. Take this color out of the first color ramp and plug it to the first one. And Blender will automatically move the first one to the second socket and change the blending mode from add to multiply. And that's how it will look like. Basically what's going on is that if we look at this texture, notice the white areas. And if we click on this texture, notice the white areas. What's going on is that a blender will multiply 0 or one that are coming out of here. Well, the 01 coming out of here. So that's why if you focus on these dark parts, they are basically 0 value when we multiply them with the white parts of the second one, they will basically black because this is 0 and multiplying them by anything will always be 0. That's why if you hit control shift and to previous node, Let's way they will always stay because they are black values. They are 0 to the computer. And that's why no matter what color basically is coming or no matter what color we're multiplying them by, they will always turn black. I hope this will make sense. Let's right now, makes it a less Voronoi texture. Go Shift a and look for math, but a trite here after the first multiply node and take the first socket and plug it to the first socket and change the operation from add to multiply. And you will have something that looks like this. And let's actually going to be the main setup for our rock shader or the first variation of our rock shaders. I will select all of these control G to group them, it F2 to rename them. And let's call this rock underscore variation, underscore one and hit Enter. The last thing that we gonna do right now is basically to mix it this rock variation with the base form. I will take all of these nodes somewhere right here. The best way to mix them is basically also by using MF node, what we'll have a lot of math nodes right here because we're only dealing with black and white data when we're working on displacement. So I'll go Shift a and look for math, and I will put it right here. And that will take this value socket and the plug it into the second socket of this add node or the node that we just added, Control Shift and click on it to preview it. And that's how it will look like. I will not change the operation right here. I will keep it at add because I want the rocks to be putting on top of the base mountain. And that's basically how I created the first rock variation for this mountain scene in the next video, where we will add another variation of the rocks. 6. Rocks Variation 2: Hello everyone. In this video we will create the second variation of our rocks that we're putting on top of our mountain, as I mentioned before, this is how our texture look like right now. But because we don't have an a value right here in the displacement, in the, actually in the scale, we barely can see the effect of displacement taking place. There are two different things that you can do. You can probably like, maybe crank this number, something like 200, which will make your mountain looks something like this. Or instead of that, I will keep this number one. I don't like fidgeting with it, and I will probably just add one of my favorite nodes, which is the math node. Let's add math and put it right here. And basically what I want, I will multiply all the values coming from the entire displacement setup going right here, I will multiply all of these values. Let's change this to multiply by 200, which will give you exactly the same result because all the values I multiply them by 200, it is basically the same as changing the scale to 200. Yeah, I will keep it like this for now. And now, let's work on our second variation of the rocks. I will zoom out and get back right here. I'm gonna do is basically to add a noise texture shift, a Noise Control Shift, and click on it to preview it. But before we do that, make sure to plug the vector to the vector. We mentioned the last time the shortcut hold Alt right-most button and just drag over the two nodes that you want to connect. I will get back to working at this Voronoi texture or actually this noise texture, this scale is too big. I will bring it to something like 0.3 for the detail, I will keep it at two and the roughness and the distortion I will give them also at the default value, 0.5 for the roughness and 0 for distortion, I needed this texture to be a little bit more contrasty Shift a, and let's edit color ramp. Let's put it right here. I will take this flag, let's say to something like 0.5. And for this flag, let's put it at something like 0.6. Let's add another instance of a noise texture shift. A noise texture, put it right here, control shift to preview it. And don't forget also to plug it to the rest of the mapping node Alt right-most button. Drag it to the node that you want to connect. The scale is too big. Let's put 0.5 this time slightly bigger than 0. Then the zero-point three that we've put in the first noise texture for the detail, I will keep it at two, same for the roughness, same for the distortion. We'll make it a little bit more contrasty shift a color ramp. Let's drag this value and let's take this value. Let's say something like this. That's looking good. I think I will just probably just leave it looking argue this and right now, I need to mix both of these. So go Shift a and look for a meth. Put it right here. I will take the color coming out of the first noise texture, lug it to the first socket so that blender moves the second socket, the first socket for the second socket, they looks neater this way. The last thing I will mix both of these two nodes with a Voronoi texture, same that we did right here. So go shift a, look for a Voronoi texture. Change the type from F1 to edge to distance. The edge makes sure to connect it with the rest of the mapping note Alt, and do it like this way holding the right-most button for the scale control shift to preview this node and the scale, Let's lower to something like one. Yeah, that will be basically our small rocks, let's say. And to control the intensity of this Voronoi texture, I will add a mask node, shift a mass, put it right here, change the mode from add to multiply. And for the value I will lower it to 0.1. And now I will mix this setup with this Voronoi texture, shift a math node it right here, take the first value coming from the first setup and put it right here. And also one thing that I forgot to mention is that makes sure to change the operation of the first math node. That is mixing the two, the two noise texture changed from Ed to multiply and also change this one from add to multiply. We will have something looking like this. I will select all of these nodes, control G to group them, F2 to rename the entire group. And let's call it rock underscore variation, underscore two. And what I'm gonna do is basically to combine the entire setup with this rock variation number two. To do this, Let's add a math node, put it right here, and that will take the output that is coming out of this multiply node. I will take it as move up and plug it into the second socket. And you will have something looking like this. And to see exactly how our results looks like, just move on to the principal BSD F Control Shift and click on it to see it. And that's how our mountain looks like right now. It is somehow starting to give us the illusion of like actually it is a mounted, except we probably need to add more and more details to it so that, let's say fits more into like the shape of a real mount. And that's actually the main thing that we will focus for the next couple of videos. Let's sit for me for this video. See you in the next one. 7. Add More Variations: Hello everyone. In this video we will add more variation to our mountain. To do this, I will basically makes this entire setup where the noise texture. So here's what we're gonna do. I will zoom out and we'll go ride down here. And that will add a nice texture shift a noise. Make sure to plug it also to the mapping node right here. I'll probably just select it and move it down here so it is closer to where I work. They will take the vector and just plug it to the Vector Control Shift and click on it to preview it. And for the scale, I will bring it down to something like 0.1. And for the details, I will bring it to, let's say eight. Now I need to add the math node to control the intensity of this noise texture shift a and look for math. Put it right here, and that will change the operation from add to multiply. I might drag this value a little bit down. Let's see. I will keep it at 0.4 and I will mix it both of these two nodes with the rest of the tree. To do that, I will also just add the math node right here. Go Shift a and let's look for math. Put it right here. And here's also another trick. Hit Shift and click on this socket. Let's move on to this node right here, which is the Multiply node, collect shift again and hit the socket. And basically we are right now we selected both of these two sockets. If you hit right now f, basically Blender will create the link between this node with this other node. So this is another way. If you want to link like really far nodes, That's another way you can do it, except this time for the operation for this math node. Instead of using our typical ad, I will actually use a different operation, which is subtract. I want to subtract that texture from the mountain right now if we get back to our principle be SDF Control Shift and clicking on it, this is the result we got. It made a huge difference. I think let's see the before and after. If I select both of these two nodes, hit M to mute them. So this is the before and the after. This is the before and this is the after. It looks miles better, I will hit Control G to group them and hit F2 to rename them, and let's call them variation. The last thing I'm going to add basically to finish this displacement tree is basically I want to remove a little bit more out of this Mountains because it's mountains are not just like small peaks. There are all select some sort of like caves inside of the mountains and all of that. And we need to create the illusion also. To achieve that effect, I will heavily rely also on the noise texture. So I will go Shift a and let's look for noise texture. Make sure to plug it with this mapping node, a vector to vector control shift and click on it to preview it. It will look something like this. And for the scale I will bring it way, way down 0.6. Let's try 0.3, Let's try 0.15 and basically going by health every time. Let's try 0.75. No, actually 0 actually 0.075, I guess I'm just going to put 0.01. It will look something like this. I will keep the rest of the settings of the way they are. And die will add shift a, basically a color ramp. And let's just put it right here. I will take this and let's see. I want to make it more contrasty. Maybe let's just put a 0.45. Then let's take this flag something let's say like let's just keep it at this value for now. And that's the result we will get. As I mentioned, this basically map will act as the removal or as a remover from the rest of the mesh. So here's what we're gonna do. I will mix it with the rest of the notes setup. I will probably take all of these nodes somewhere right here. And that will go Shift a and add another one final math node and put it right here. Because I want to remove the dark parts. I want them basically to be some sort of flat. And to achieve that effect, I will need to change the operation from add to multiply, shift and click on the socket. Let's move on back to our color ramp Shift and click on the color socket and just hit F to create the link between them. And that's how our shader we're looked like or actually our displacement map will look like. And the last thing, Control Shift and click on your principal, BSD f, and that's the result that we will get. Basically we create the illusion like there are some flat areas that are going right here. But after that, we will move to our big mountains and all of that. So I think that this will give us some sort of like, let's say a cinematic look or will give us the freedom to create some really interesting. First of all, environment and Secretary volts, some interesting camera movements later on when we create our shots. So yeah, that's how I created the base form and all the different levels of variation from rocks, removing stuff, adding stuff and all of that and how I mix them together. In the next video, I will explain or actually review this entire node tree so that you understand the concept behind it. And in the next couple of videos, we will basically shade this mountain in realistic way. That's it basically for me, for this video, see you in the next one. 8. Displacement Network Overview: Hello everyone. In this video I want to explain basically the hierarchy of all this, like basically nodes and how they work with each other. The base form of our mountain which is looking right now, something like this. It is actually driven by a lot of unlike are actually a combination of a lot of Voronoi texture and a lot of noise texture. That's actually the base texture that we use to create our displacement, which is this node right here, to this node, which is the displacement we plug or actually we put before it, math nodes are multiplying so that we multiply all the values that are coming out of here by 200 would give us the illusion of displacement because the number one that wasn't the scale air is pretty low. And as I mentioned before, you probably can just plug 200 right here and it will give you the exact same result. I just want to do it separately. It is just a self preference, but as I mentioned, you can put 200 right here. Now let's focus on the biggest part of this shader. First of all, we created our base mountain by combining a Voronoi texture and another Voronoi texture to voronoi textures, we combine them using a math node because we're dealing with black and white values in the entire node tree. And then we use an RGB curves to make it a little bit more contrasty. We combine this with another, or actually the first variation of the rocks, which is the combination of two noise textures. Basically we put them inside of a color ramp to make them more contrasty. We combine them using a map node and a multiply operation. Then we mix them finally with another Voronoi texture using a multiply node. And the only difference between the rug variation number one and the rock variation number two is that we slightly changed the values of the two noise texture and the Voronoi texture. Same thing with combine the two noise texture using the Multiply node. And then we added the Voronoi texture, or actually we multiplied it on top of all of that using the Multiply node. After we created this, we added a variation which will basically create or actually emphasize the effect of like jagged edges on the mountain. And another one which act like as a remover, which I forgot to put inside of a label. So select them, Control J, F2, and let's call them remover, all of these different maps, we combine them using math nodes, mainly when we want to add other stuff, we will use the add operation. But when we want to remove stuff, we will use either subtract or multiply. They are actually the same operation that you'll learn in school. Adding and subtracting and multiplication, they're all the same. There is no difference. And that's actually one of the things I tried to keep the different operation that we will use as something we can all understand. And yeah, this entire setup, as I mentioned before, will be fed to the Multiply node, then the displacement. And finally our material output, which will give us a result that looks like this. And that's actually the hierarchy of all of these different nodes. They might seem scary and I understand that because there are a lot of layers to it. But actually once you understand the concept behind them, they are not actually that complicated. Let's sit for me for this video and the next one, we will have only focus on how to shave this mountain in a realistic way. See you in the next one. 9. Snow Shader: Hello and welcome everyone. In the first video where we will basically start shading our mountain, which basically means like given it the realistic look, let me zoom in my principal BSD F right here. I will expand and using this small arrow. And here's what we're gonna do. Basically, if we think about it in a logical way, our mountain will be composed of two different materials. One material will be meant or responsible for the color of the rocks and the other one will be responsible for the snow, which means that we need to make stew differentiator, one of them for the rocks and one of them basically for the snow. So first things first, let's take this principle, BSD F, and that will hit Shift D to duplicate it and I will put it right here. I might move them a little bit up somewhere right here. And as I mentioned, I need to mix them. I will go Shift a and let's look for mix and we're mixing shaders. So make sure to pick mixed shader. I will put it right here on the line, and I will take the second one and just plug it into the second socket. And I might put it right here in the middle. So basically at this first one will be responsible for the rocks and the second one will be responsible for the snow. So first things first, let's just start by creating some sort of a material for our snow Control Shift and click on this principle by SDF to see how it will look like. And the first thing I think I'm going to do is basically to change from Gx to multi-scalar gx. And for random walk, I will just change it to Christian barely for the metallic, I will keep it at 0. And for the specular I think actually I'm going to lower it a little bit down. Let's say 0.25, which is basically the health of 0.5. Now comes the most important part, which is the roughness. The thing is I won't variable amount of roughness in instead of basically just picking one number, I wanted to drive this roughness using a map. And to do that, I think that's our best option will be to use a Voronoi texture. So I will go Shift a and let's just look for voronoi texture. I will put it right here and I will take the distance and just plug it into the roughness. Let's Control Shift and click on it to see how it looks like. Basically it looks something like this. And the first thing I think I'm gonna do is basically to bump this scale way, way up. Let's say for example, 50. Let's try 100. For my taste, I think that this is looks pretty good. The only thing that I noticed is that it doesn't have enough contrast. So actually I think I want to make it a little bit more contrasty. So let's go Shift a and look for color ramp. Put it right here, Control Shift and click on the Color Ramp to see how it looked like. And let's maybe take this black flag somewhere. Basically, I want it to be barely noticeable, so I will go with 0.85 and for the white flag, alright, I think I will go with 0.86. So they are really, really close to each other, barely touching each other. So this will be our snow to drive the roughness. And if I hit control shift on our principal, BSD f, That's what we will get right now. I think I will connect this Voronoi texture to basically a mapping setup, which is basically this mapping node right here. I will select it. Let's move it way, way up. Let's put it right here. And as I mentioned before, you can hit Alt right-most button to connect both of these two nodes. And Blender will do its magic to connect them. And as you can see right now, everything kind of vanished. But we basically created if we hit control shift on this Voronoi texture, notice that actually it is not like fully white. It is composed of like, really, really small dots like this, which will act like the small grains of snow. So basically our snow will be a little bit more textured, not just a blob of whiteness. And that's actually pretty good. I think let's see how our shader looked like. Control Shift and click on it and that's how our snow will look like. Let's select this entire setup. Hit Control G to put them inside a label, hit F2 to rename it, and let's just call it snow and hit enter. And that's basically it for our snow shader. And in the next video, we will take care of creating our rock shaders. See you in the next video. 10. Rocks Shader: Hello everyone. In this video we will create the shader for our rocks. First things first, I guess I'm gonna do the same thing as I did for this principle, BSD F for the snow, which is basically to change this GTEx to multi-scalar GG x. And for the random walk, I will change it to Christian barely Control Shift and click on it to see how it looked like right now. And let's start shading. Here's what I think. I will basically create a map for the roughness and another one I will create it for the normal input. The roughness will basically, it is kind of self-explanatory. It will control the roughness of our shader or of our rocks. And the normal, it will basically add more bumps and like small peaks to our rocks, would, we give the illusion of more details on our rocks? So let's just do that. And one thing I think I'm going to lower this specular a little bit down to something like 0.45. Well, let's say just 0.4. Let's first start with the roughness. And as I mentioned, I will create a mapped drive our roughness. To create this map, I will combine a Voronoi texture. So just add a Voronoi texture. I will put it right here, and let's add a noise texture. Noise. For this Voronoi texture, I will connect it to this mapping setup right here. So all right, mouse button and connect it with this for the noise texture, I'm not going to actually connect it with the mapping node. I'm going to add a mapping no, Just for it. So I will go Shift a and let's add a mapping node. Let's put it right here. I will connect vector to the vector and I will connect this mapping note to this mapping notes, so ALT right mouse button and connect it together. So basically it is like a mapping note. For our mapping note, you will understand why I'm doing that in a second. Control Shift and click on our Voronoi textures to see how it looked like and it looks something just like this. I think I'm going to change the scale a little bit, so I'll start bringing this number a little bit up. Let's say something like 50, maybe even more. Let's try 100 basically we want like really, really small circles. And for this I need to make it a little bit more contrasty. So the best way to do that is basically by adding a color ramp. Let's put it right here. And let's just start cranking this number way, way up. I guess even a little bit more. Let's try 0.87. And for the white flag, I'm going to take it to something like 0.895, which will give us this sort of things looks kind of like noise, but it is actually our texture, which as I mentioned, it will act like the small peaks and grains that are on the rocks. I hope what I'm saying makes sense. It is basically just a texture so that our rocks will not just be smooth and flat. They do actually have some sort of texture on them. And for this right now let's see our, how our noise texture looked like Control Shift and click on it will look something like this. And the first thing I'm gonna do is basically two. Let's try lowering the scale this time just to make it a little bit bigger. Let's try one. It will look something like this, which I like it. Let's bump the details to the doubles. So to multiply by two, that's four. So we do have more detail on the edges and all of that. So it is more structured. And for the distortion, Let's try to bring it a little bit up. Let's say 0.5. And that's actually, in my opinion, looking pretty good. And also as usual, I will add a color ramp to basically add more contrast to my texture. I will take this probably, let's take this to something, let's say 0.4 for this flag. Let's also lower it to something like, let's say 0.6. So we have something looking like this right now. Basically by combining the setup, which is the Voronoi texture and the color ramp with the noise texture will create a map that will drive our roughness. How to mix them? Go Shift a and let's look for a mix RGB. Let's put it right here. I will take the color to the first socket, the color of the noise texture to the second socket Control Shift and click on it to preview it. But actually instead of doing that and basically just mixing both of them, what if we mix this noise texture with a gray color? So here's what we're gonna do Control right-most button to get the links. I will take this color, which is basically that belongs to the color ramp, the noise texture. I will plug it to the color one. It will look something like this and I will keep this number actually the way it is. Maybe later on, we might make it a, basically a darker shade of gray, but for now, I'll keep it like this and I will take the color out of this color ramp and it will plug it actually to the factor and you will have something that looks like this. So basically right now we don't have those small dots that are here on the whiteness. They are basically right now limited only on the dark parts. And that's exactly what we want. And let's take the color and plug it into the roughness, whereas the roughness it is right here. And Control Shift and click on our principle be SDF. And it will look something like this. Probably you will say, Hey, nothing much is happening, why we did that. But as you can see, if you like you really pay attention, you will notice like there are like small grains that are on the rocks, which will add more details to our rocks that are on the mountain. So our shader is working. And what I'm gonna do is basically to select this entire setup. I will hit Control J, hit F2 to rename it, Let's call it rocks and rescore. Roughness will move it right here. Let's take this mapping right here. And right now let's work a little bit on our normal input, which actually I think it will take a little bit more work. And basically for our normal, we will do all amongst the same thing, which is basically combining and always texture with a Voronoi texture to drive our normal Oligo Shift a. And let's just add a Voronoi texture. Let's also add the noise texture. So go search noise texture and window. We'll put it right here and I want to pause the thing. Let's just move this setup like similar right here so that we have more space to work freely on our Shader. All right, that's looking pretty good like this. Alright, let's start basically by seeing how a Voronoi texture looks like Control Shift and click on it. It looks something like this. And actually before we do anything, we will be using the same technique that we used in the first chapter of the light of this course, which is the desert chapter, which is that we will mix the original mapping with a noise texture so that we have more variety to the way this Voronoi texture, it is mapped on the surface of our mountains. So yeah, let's just do that pretty quick. So if you remember, we have our mapping node. So let's add a noise texture, noise texture, Control Shift and click on it to see how it will look like. It looks something like this. And we probably need to hook it to our beloved mapping setup, which is right here, alt, right most button and connect to it. It will look something like this. I will keep all the settings the way they are. I'm not going to change them. This is our original mapping. This is the mapping that we will basically combined with this mapping setup. So go Shift a and let's add a mix RGB. Let's put it right here. I will take the vector two color one and take this factor to color to control Shift and click on it to see how to look like. It looks something like this. And I actually will lower the factor a little bit down. Basically the effect will take place here and the transitions. Let's maybe put a 0.15. The mapping setup right now that is coming out of this mixed node or actually the map will drive our vector of the Voronoi texture. So Control Shift and click on your Voronoi texture and it will look something like this, please, if you don't understand what we exactly did, That's actually the exact same method that we learned in the desert chapters. So make sure to check the desert chapter so that you understand what we're basically doing for the type of this Voronoi texture, I will change from F1 to distance the edge, which will make it look something like this. And for the scale, Let's try lower in it a little bit down. So we'll tool basically means that they will be bigger. Let's put one and I think that's a fair size for our different rocks. I think so. Yeah. We'll keep it at one. The only thing that I think I'm gonna do is basically to make it a little bit more contrasty Shift a, and let's add a color ramp. Let's put it right here. And the only thing I'm gonna do is basically to take this flag somewhere. Let's say 0.25. That's perfect. And basically we will combine this Voronoi texture right now with this noise texture. First things first, let's basically Alt and connect this Voronoi texture to our original mapping setup or our original mapping node. Control Shift and click on it to see how it will look like. It looks something like this. Let's zoom on it to see how it look like and dwell. Let's bring the detail to something like eight. And right now let's combine the noise texture with the setup that is out of the Voronoi texture and the color ramp. Do you do that? You can probably just use mix RGB, but instead of that, I would like just using math node. Take the color from the first socket and take the factor to the second socket. And for the operation I will keep it at Add Control Shift and click on it. And you will have something that just look like this. So basically we're adding the noise texture over our Voronoi texture after we basically made it a little bit more contrasty. Now unfortunately, we can't basically directly plug this value directly to the normal map. That doesn't make any sense because we need to tell blender that, hey, this is like some sort of a height data. But actually if you remember our normal map, we're supposed to feed it a combination of red and green and the blue value of one. And that's actually something that we explained in the ocean chapter. So make sure also to watch it. And instead of that, we do have right now a black and white map. So to do that, instead of using our normal map to basically to drive our normal setup, actually we will add another node which is called bump. I will move this principle-based. If somewhere right here, I will take this bump right here. And if you focus basically this bump node will take a black and white data and turn it to unnormal data. So basically I will take the value out of the height control shift and click to see how our bump look like. And notice that it is basically turned this black and white data to our like usual red and green and blue map. And that's actually the magic of the bump map. So instead of that, we will basically, as I mentioned, just using bump node and connect the normal, rather normal if you hit right now Control Shift and click on your principal, BSD F, this is the result that you will get. So notice that we created a lot of details right here on the surface, which will basically make our mountain look way, way better. And it added way more variety to basically to our mountains. So it is not like just a block of white clay. So yeah, let's basically right now select all of these nodes. It Control G to group them, hit F2 to rename this group. And let's call it, for example, rocks and underscore bumps. Let's move it somewhere right here so that everything will be visible later on. The only thing that you might say right now, hey, but thus doesn't look like rocks at all. So yeah, the main problem with that is that we need to change the base color. Let's select our base color, make it way, way darker, will look something like this. Maybe even a little bit darker. Maybe drag the saturation a little bit up, something like 0.06. And for the hue, Let's play a little bit with it. Let's say 0.6 and maybe bring this value a little bit up, maybe a little bit darker. So I think like this actually looks pretty good for my taste, so I will keep it like that in case you want the exact color. This is actually the the color to B to C to D. Yeah, water coincidence. Yeah, that's basically it for how I created my rock texture. And right now we basically finish creating our snow shader and our rocks shader. And the only thing that we need to do if I click on our mix shader Control Shift and click on it. This is how our setup looks like. And I think you already guessed what we need to do in the next video, which is basically to create a factor map, which basically will tell blender where to use the rocks and where to use the snow. And that's actually what we will be doing in the next video. And also the last video of how we created the shader for this mountain. Yeah. See you everyone in the next video. 11. Snow and Rocks Factor: Hello and welcome. In this video we will create the MAB that will drive our factors socket that we tell blender where to use our snow and where to use the ROCC shader. This actually will be super easy and it might sound at first a little bit tricky, but it is actually super simple if you pay attention. So here's what we're gonna do. Basically, we need to figure out a way to tell blender that, hey, the snow should be on top, the rocks basically will be under it. It is easy to say what we need, but probably it will take a little bit of work to exactly do such a setup instead, let's first of all start with an ambient occlusion, which is for our luckier, is the first node that lender will show to you. And if you hit Control Shift to see how this node look like two, basically it will give you somehow the areas where basically the rocks will meet each other. For example, if I get back to my principal BSD F Control Shift and click on it. Basically the ambient occlusion map will give me the areas that are basically separating all of these different rocks. Control Shift and click on it. This is how it will look like. Notice that it is basically giving me those areas of contact. We do have a couple of settings right here. And actually one of them is actually distance. If you start cranking this number up, you will basically add more and more detailed. But I'm not going to go crazy with it because it's slowed down a renders. So I will keep it something like four and I will hit only local. And that will have basically this black and white map that looks something like this. Which if we think about it in a logical way, that's actually where the snow should be, but that's not enough because we need to mix it with other stuff. To do that, let's add our beloved texture coordinates. So we'll go texture coordinate. I will put it right here. And if you hit basically Control Shift to see the generated control shifting into see the normal, this is our normal data and we need to turn this to a black and white map. To do that, go Shift a and add non-normal. And let's just put it right here. And if you hit Control Shift again to this node, you will see the dot, which will basically give you a black and white data. So we basically turn the normal, which is like this kind of mix of red and green and blue. We turned it to a black and white map, which is actually what we want because we will be combining it with a black and white data that is coming out of the ambient occlusion map. But before we do that, I want to make this map a little bit more contrasty. Go Shift a and let's add a color ramp. Let's put it right here. And I want it to be like super contrast you. So I will take this somewhere, like, let's say 0.7 and I will take this to somewhere, let's say 0.8. And it will look something like this. And I will do the exact same thing for our, for my ambient occlusion Control Shift and click on it, I will add a color ramp node. I will put it right here. I will take this black flag, right? Something like, let's say 0.9. Let's take the swatch flag way, way down, something like 0.93, maybe also at stake this flag to something like basically really close to each other. So we basically crushing the contrast as much as we can right now we do have two different maps. One of them is driven by the ambient occlusion, and one of them is driven by our normal map that we get from our texture coordinate and we need to mix them. And because basically they are just black and white data, I will use a math notes, so I will go for math and let's just put it right here. And I will take the scholar and plug it to value two or the second socket and make sure to hit clamp that we don't go above one or below 0. And that's how our, basically our map right now will look like. But here's something if you focus, we do have in this ambient occlusion node, we do have a normal socket. But what if, if we like drive our ambient occlusion with another texture in the normal socket, this will basically give us a better map to control our factor. So to do that, it is actually super easy. We will combine a couple of noise texture and we will feed them to the normal socket. So to do that, go Shift a and let's look for noise texture. Hit Shift D to duplicate it. And we will basically link them to our beloved mapping node, which is somewhere right here. So Alt right-most button connect the first one, alt, right most button to connect the second one, Let's zoom back on them. It Control Shift to preview the first noise texture. It will look something like this. And maybe let's start dropping down the scale. Let's say something like 0.2 for the details, I will keep it at 24, the roughness I will keep it also at 0.5. And maybe let's add a little bit of distortion, something like 0.5. The second noise texture, I will change the scale, Let's say Control Shift and click on it first to see it. Let's maybe put ten. So it is basically the double. And the only thing also I'm going to change is basically to put the exact same number for the distortion, which is 0.5. I want to crank the contrast of this texture. So go Shift a and let's add a color ramp. Let's put it right here. And I will basically take this white flags somewhere like 0.6. And for this one, let's say 0.73 and it will look something like this. I will do the same thing for the first noise texture, which is basically to crank the Contrast Shift a and let's add a color ramp. And I will take this value way up to something like 0.6, and it will look something like this. I will multiply them with each other. So I'll go Shift a and let's add a math node. I will put it right here and take with color and plug it to the second socket. And instead of add, I will change it to multiply. And you will have something like that, looks just like this. But as you can see, the normal socket needs a normal map to be plugged right here. So we need to turn this black and white data to a normal map or to an RGB color that basically represents the normal man. It actually we did that before. Right here when we did basically the rock bumps, which is by using the bump node. And that's actually the same way we're going to do it right here. So let's go Shift a and let's add a bump. I will put it right here. And make sure to plug the value to the height, not the normal and disconnect the socket right here. And you will have something that looks just like this. And right now all you have to do is basically to plug this normal to the normal if you hit Control Shift to see how our ambient occlusion will look like. It will look something like this. And that's how our final map will look like right now let's take this, basically the output that is coming out of this operation, shift and click on the socket. And let's move on to the factor which drives our mix shader Shift and click on this socket and hit F. And if you hit Control Shift and click on your mix shader, you will have something that looks just like this. And as you can see, mostly our mountain right now it is actually covered by snow and we barely can see right here, there are some areas basically that are covered with or actually where we can see our texture. The main reason for that is that we need to play a little bit with how our basically this map is actually looking like and how it is working. But instead of doing that right now, I will actually do that in the second video where we will fix a couple of problems in our shader network. But before we leave, let's just select all of these it Control G to group them into two. Basically rename this group and let's call it snow slash mountain underscore factor. So we know exactly what does this node or this setup does. That's basically it for basically everything. And the only thing that we need to do right now is basically to play a little bit with all of these different settings so that we have a better looking mountains. See you there everyone. 12. Finalizing The Mountain: Hello and welcome everyone. In this video, we will basically finalize our mountain because I still think that our mountains still didn't reach its full potential. And you will be surprised by the end result. First thing is first, I think that the height of our mountain is a little bit too low and I don't like it that much. So the first thing I'm gonna do is basically to go back to our math node, which is before the displacement setup. And it will crack this number to 300 and it will look something like this right now. Maybe also I feel like there are a lot of like rocks actually pointing. I'm like away from the mountain, which doesn't look that good in my opinion. So we'll get back to my, all of my different nodes right here, which are like the bolus, the bass mountain, and the raga variations. And for this actually, I think that it is two contrasting right here. Actually, I'm going to give it a little bit more reading room, so it looks something like this. If I get back to my normal shader Control Shift and click on it, basically I'm somehow trying to make it less contrasty than it used to be, or let's say less edgy basically by giving those black and white maps more breathing room. And same thing I will do right here. And also if you remember, we do have this remover, which actually if we make it a little bit more contrasty tool, basically actually add more height and yeah, let's maybe crank the contrast a little bit above this color ramp and you will have something that looks just like this, which I think it fits better the shape of the mountain that we're trying to create. The other thing, we get back to our map that drives our snow and mountain factor Control Shift and click on it, it will look something like this. And basically blender right now is using white for the areas there will be snow and black for the areas where we want to see the rocks. But actually we want to see more of the rocks. We want the majority of this shader to be dominated by rocks. So to do that actually I figured out a small problem or a small issue. If you see the ambient occlusion map, you'll notice that basically everything is white. And if we look at it after the colorRamp to look something like this, and actually we want to invert it so that the black areas will contain snow and the white areas, we want them to be rocks. So basically we need to invert it. The good thing is that if you jumped to this color ramp node, which is basically controlling the contrast of the ambient occlusion map. And do you hit the small arrow, you will have an option called a flip color ramp. And if you click on it, you will have something that looks like this. So basically the majority of our ambient occlusion map is right now black. And if you see the final map that we will end up with, it will look something like this. And just basically by seeing it like this, which is like just black and white, we can definitely see that this looks way better than just our typical map that we used to have. And right now if you hit Control Shift and click in your mix shader, you will be surprised because this is or mountain is looking like right now, isn't that really good? So yeah, basically by controlling the amount of contrast inside of this map, you will be able to control how much snow it is on the mountain. And also another thing I noticed is that there is a little bit of reflection going right here. The reflection of all of these mountains, it might be yourself preference, but I actually, I don't like it that much because it looks like this is actually super glossy. I don't like that look to be honest. So I will actually lower the specular of my snow texture, which is this one right here. My principle be SDF, that belongs to this. No, I will lower it way, way down to 0. So it will look something like, let's say more rough and it fits better. The aesthetic were looking for. Yeah, that's basically it for all the different settings that I changed basically to finalize the look of this Sean, I didn't do a lot to be honest, because I didn't want to bother you with like different numbers to change and all of that. I tried to keep it as simple as possible, but hey, please feel free basically to play with this shader the way you want. Which by the way, in the next video, we will take an overview look for our entire setup and mainly for our shader network. Yeah, see you in the next video, everyone. 13. Shader Network Overview: Hello everyone and welcome In the final video of our shader network, because in the next couple of videos, we will finalize the look of our shot. It does definitely has been a long journey. And just by seeing this entire node tree, it wasn't easy at all creating it and you should be proud of yourself if you reach to this point. So yeah, tap yourself in this video, all I wanted to do is basically to take a look at this setup right here, because we already reviewed this setup right here that belongs to the displacement setup. So yeah, let's just take a look. Our shading network right here. Here's our approach for it. Obviously, when we create a mountain, we will need different, or let's say two different shader. One of them is for the rocks and the other for this node. So the first thing that we did is basically to create a snow material, and it was actually super simple. The only thing that we did is basically to drive our roughness by using a Voronoi texture that we made it super contrasty. And this was responsible for our snow texture. It was super simple and super easy. And after we do that, we needed to create our rock shader. Shader, except of course that we use the principal BSD F would like really dark color to give the illusion of like that there are actually rocks and basically we created two different maps. One of them is a map that will drive the roughness. And it is basically the combination of a Voronoi texture and the noise texture. We made both of them contrasty, we mix them and we plug them into the roughness, straightforward, the rock bumps, which is a little bit more tricky, where we basically combined or voronoi texture with a noise texture. We combine them and we fed them into a bump node, which will basically go to the normal map. The main reason we use this bump node because as I mentioned, the data that is coming out of this ED node, it is actually black and white data and the normal map needs a color data. So the bump node will take the height and convert it to a normal map, which is really good. The other thing, instead of mapping this Voronoi texture directly with this mapping setup right here or this mapping node, we use this slightly different technique which I discussed in the desert chapter, which is basically by combining the original mapping with a noise texture. We combine them so that we do have like a modified way on how we want to map this Voronoi texture on the surface. And that's exactly what we did as I mentioned in the desert chapter. And by doing this, we created our rock shader. And the last thing because we need to tell blender where to put the snow and where to put the rocks. We created this setup right here, which is basically the combination of an ambient occlusion map, as I mentioned before, it will tell us the areas where rocks basically would meet each other and the texture coordinate where we need the normal data. We converted them to a black and white data by using a normal map, we made a super contrasty and same thing for the ambient occlusion. We fed it to a color ramp and we made it super contrasty. And then we mix them by using MF node and an add operation. The other thing is that we use a couple of combining by combining the noise texture and another noise texture. We made them super contrasty. We multiply them and we converted them to black to a color data for the normals through a bump node, as I just explained, and basically we fed it into the ambient occlusion or actually the normal socket in the ambient inclusion, which as I mentioned, will give us better details. And by doing this, this is actually our entire node tree or entire setup that is responsible for coloring our mountain. And if you hit Control Space bar for this entire setup inside the shader editor, this is our entire node tree. It is definitely huge and a little bit intimidating for someone who doesn't know exactly what we basically created. But right now, you're supposed to have a solid understanding of how this entire new tree actually works. And you should be comfortable basically twiddling with different values to get different looks, which is basically the ultimate goal. You don't need to stick to the result that you're seeing right now. But there is actually a large room for experimenting, maybe improve this shader that I created. It is up to you in the next couple of videos. Let's have more fun by adding a sky, maybe add some camera movements and finalize our short for the final render without any further, I do see you in the next video. Bye everyone. 14. Displacement Map Baking: Hello and welcome everyone in this video where we will basically start trying to create our camera animation. We want to be creating it in this video. We're actually going to do that in the next video because our camera will be moving. There is no way that we can see this animation in real-time because our shader is really heavy and unless you have like really beefy machine, it is almost impossible to see this animation in real time. So that's why in case we want to see this animation, we need to figure out some sort of a solution. Some of you might suggest that we can maybe jump to the solid view, but as you remember, we're using micro displacement features inside of Blender so they won't be visible in daylight. Solid is viewport shading. What is the solution? Some of you might say, hey, like maybe just, for example, instead of using cycles, just use EV. But actually it is gonna be the same problem because as I mentioned before, the micro displacement features unfortunately are only supported in the cycles rendering engine. And when you will be using EV, you will end up with a result that looks something like this. And as you can probably notice, my viewport is super laggy and slow. So also this is not a solution. Let's get back to cycles. The easiest solution for this, and it will take probably a little bit of time to basically optimize the scene, or let's say, to be able to see our camera animation in real-time, which says that we need to figure out a way to tell blender to displace this plane and the solid viewport the same way. Basically after the micro displacement, after we displace it using our Shading Network. So here's what we're gonna do. Make sure you are in your shader editor. And from here, I will hit Control Shift and click on this math node that we used before, the displacement node basically to see our final displacement texture. And after you do that, go shift a hit new type image texture. Let's just put it right here. And I will hit New. And from here let's, for example, call it mountain and rescore displacement for the size, Let's plug 4096 so it is four K. The most important thing. Make sure to check 32-bit flow that's important and hit Okay, what we will do is basically to kind of convert this texture, which is like after the math node, we will convert it to a normal image, which later on we will use it to displace our plane. To do that from the properties editor, you will have a tab called the bake. And from here you will have big time. Make sure to change it from combined to emit and blend rule automatically begged the structure into this image. And after you do that, make sure also to change your sampling from this crazy number which is 4096. Let's maybe just change it, for example, to a low number. Let's say even something like, I don't know, maybe like two. It doesn't matter that much because it is just for reference. So we don't need a lot of samples to create basically a good texture too will be more than enough, and also it will allow you to bake faster. After finishing that, Let's get back to our Bake tab and just hit bake. And you will have this like small slide right here that will show you the progress of your baking process depending on the power of your computer and all of that. It might take a little bit of time, but actually it will be like really quick because most of the time it doesn't take a lot of time. Yeah, see you after the begging has finished. Alright everyone, my baking just finished and we basically baked our texture into this image to see it, make sure to jump from the shader editor to the image editor. And from here, open this small tab right here and you will have your texture right here called Mountain displacement. I'll click on it. This is basically our displacement texture. Now we need to save it, go to Image, Save As, and I will probably save it into my images folder or the resources folder that you will find with the project files. I already saved it before for the course, but here's what we're gonna do. Make sure to change from PNG to open in XR and make sure to give it an RGBA and follow the color depth. Make sure to change it to float full. Other than that, everything will be good except the only thing I'm gonna do is basically to just add a small number effort, for example, 02, because I already have a displacement texture right here and I will hit Save As image. And basically right now we save this basically this displacement map into our hard drive so we won't lose it after we did that, Let's get back to our shader Control Shift and click on your mixed shader to see the final result. And let's maybe collapses like this because you won't need the shader editor for now. Let's get back to the solid view and maybe also show our overlays. And that will go Shift a and add another plane. It makes sure that size is going to be one hundred, ten hundred meter because of the size of this plane, it is actually 1000 meters, so I will change it to 1000 and you will see some sort of clipping going on because they are basically identical and we're overlaying one on the other. So to fix this problem, let's just hide our, our main mountain and for whatever reason we change this name. So let's call it mountain. This plane makes sure to hit Tab to jump into the edit mode at the right mouse button sub-divide. And from here let's input 100. Now after doing this, let's just jump to our modifiers. I will add a subdivision modifier, maybe with a level of two, will collapse it, add the modifier displays, which will basically displaced this plane in the same way we displaced our original mountain. How are we going to do that basically by using the texture that we just baked. How to edit texture into the displacement modifier super easy. Just hit New and it will call a texture. Let's maybe call it a mountain. And their score displacement, it needs to be the exact same name of the image that we saved. It was just myself preference that I wanted to save the images basically or actually whenever I use the image, I wanted to call everything related to it with the same name so I don't get lost after doing that, Let's jump to the Image Texture tab. And from here we need to open our image, it open and let's jump to our images. And we will have our mountain displacement hit Open Image and they will have something looking like this. The most important setting is makes sure to change the color space to linear and make sure it is actually linear. Some people might find it as non-color and all of that makes sure to just change it to linear because we do have a black and white image. And also you will have here another type called mapping also makes sure it is one-to-one because by default some people will find it like for we want it to be only one. And of course right now this doesn't look like our mountain. To fix this hit tab, hit a to select all of your mesh, hit you and hit unwrap. So basically right now we unwrapped our model Deb again to exit the edit mode, Let's get back to the Modifiers tab and from the coordinates, make sure to change from local to UV. And bam, this is our mountain. It is basically the exact same mountain we created like basically just by using the shading nodes or the Shading Network and the image that we saved basically will be responsible in displacing the spleen in the 3D view port or in the solid shading viewport. Also, you can probably just select your UV map from here. Also maybe let's just bring them at the mid-level back to 0. And you can change the strength of your displacement modifier from here. By doing this, we basically recreated the same exact mountain and the solid shading viewport. And right now when we will create our camera animation, it will be super easy for us to animate it and see it in real-time because we already have to a certain extent, small mesh, small number of vertices and all of that so that we can see the animation going in real time. 15. Camera Animation: Camera animation, my friend, as simple as it sounds, it is actually the most annoying part of the entire process because at this point, you can draw in everything if you pick the wrong camera movements and the wrong framing. So we will try to do our best to create a good camera movement. We have our plane that we displaced in the last video using this displacement modifier, which as I mentioned before, it will basically allow us to see our camera animation in real time so that we can basically create a nice frame. But here's something, even though yes, this displacement modifier and seeing it like this in real time will be helpful. The thing I've noticed for wherever reason Blender doesn't like, basically recreate the exact same displacement the way we see it in the mountain. And if you show your mountain and let's jump to the rendered view, notice that first things first, they are not basically identical in terms of rotation and all of that, the peaks of this mountain which is using the displacement modifier it from this way or from the right. And the other one is from here. So we need to select our plane or our second mountain hit R to rotate it, hit Z to only rotate it on the z-axis. And let's just type 180. So basically right now both of them are orienting the same way. But even with that, notice that, for example, let's change the strength to one. Even with this, they're not technically identical because in a logical way, this white peak right here should be covering this one. And same thing for these should be somehow at the same level of these mountains right here. But that's not happening for whatever reason because I don't know. Maybe blender have some weird things on how it makes its geometry totally understandable and we can't complain. But yeah, that's one of the quirks of blender that we somehow need to deal with whenever we're using displacement maps. I've tried playing with all of these different settings right here and all of that, but nothing actually seems to help. So, yeah, we will just need to work wherever we have. Let's hide our original mountain, the heavy one, and let's get back to our normal view. And here's how I'm imagining my camera movements to be. I think I will fly from this way like this. Basically, it will be going in a parallel line to this kind of formation right here. We're seeing the horizon from this point. That's actually the camera movement that I have in mind and wire will we basically get closer to the horizon. The camera will pent up to something that looks just like this so that we can see the high peak of the mountain from here. Yeah, let's just do that really quick first things first, let's change our camera settings from here for the focal length. Let's change it to 24 because we're having landscape shooting right here for the end, as you can probably see, our camera can see further than a 100 meter or plane is actually 1000 meter. So let's crank this number to 10 thousand for the viewport display, crank this number up to one, and let's jump to our output settings from here. As you probably can remember, I'm using a weird aspect ratio, which is basically by plugging into 560 in here. So basically that we do have a cinematic aspect ratio right now let's add another viewer by dragging like this, hit 0 to jump to the camera view, hit D to hide all of these tools. Maybe let's hide all of our overlays. Let's maybe zoom in a little bit, just like this. Hit N. Let's go to View, camera to View and hit and again. So basically right now, wherever I move this basically also I'm moving my camera. So yeah, let's just try to create in a nice frame. I will always get back to my mountain view also just so that I can see how the final result will be. Because as I mentioned, we do have this problem that they are not like perfectly overlay onto each other. So I think I will zoom a little bit like this, maybe zoom out. So our first frame will be looking something like this. Let's actually, I think it is looking pretty solid. So let's jump to our timeline. I will go to the frame number one and make sure you're selecting your camera, which actually I will hit scale to scale it a little bit up here, hit I and create a keyframe for the location it I again and create a keyframe for the rotation. So we're basically animating two different properties. This is our first frame. Let's jump to the frame 240, and it will change the range to 240. And let's move the first thing. Let's move a little bit forward, something like this. And let's maybe also rotate on the z-axis, something like this so that we're shifting. We're basically also panning to change the focus of this shot. And maybe let's move a little bit forward also until it looks something like this. And from here I will hit, I hit all channels. So basically right now we will have a camera animation that looks something just like this. Instead of like this kind of speeding up and slowing down, I actually want this camera animation to keep the same Executive Velocity. Why are we selecting all of your keyframes and just select Linear and let's preview our camera animation. It will look something like this. In case your computer won't handle it. Just maybe switch, as I mentioned to the plain view and you will have a feeling of how fast your camera animation is. Maybe let's jump to the normal view, to the solid shading and let's see how it looked like. As you can see, it is like really cinematic for my taste. It looks pretty good. It is slow and steady and I think it looks pretty good. So basically I will keep it at this. I'm not gonna official launch with this camera animation. The only thing go wild, please, if you want to create some crazy camera movements, probably not recommended at what I'm trying to say is basically just take your time to find a good camera movements and all of that. But just for the sake of keeping this course short and sweet to the point, I will stick to this camera animation, but yeah, you can go wild. And also, for example, if you don't like this mountain formation, you can probably just get back to your mountain. Let's get back to the render view, changed back to your shader editor. Let's select our mountain and basically just start playing with all of these different values right here. And you will have plenty of actually infinite amount of variation of mountains formation. So you can go crazy with that and create some really interesting formations and all of that that will allow you to have different camera movements. So yeah, please take your freedom and playing with the camera movements. It is like probably the most thing that will give some sort of uniqueness and identity to your shot. So yeah, take your time in it. And the only thing that you will probably notice right now that when our camera is actually moving, there is no way we will see only like emptiness right here. We need to figure out a way to fill this background with other stuff. And that's actually what we will be doing in the next video. See you everyone there. 16. Background Mountains: Hello and welcome. If we wanted this brand new video where we will basically try to fill our empty horizon. Of course, there are multiple approaches to do this, but the easiest way probably is to just duplicate this mountain and basically changed the form of it. So it won't be like 100% applica, but as you probably know where this will add a lot of render time. And instead of doing that, there are a couple of tricks that we can use it just so that we optimize our scene as much as possible and that we do have some sort of faster renderers. If you remember, we do have our plane right here. So what if we basically just move this flame to the horizon? This should be, I think, more than enough for our scene. So I will probably just put it somewhere right here. Basically all what I'm trying to do is to just maybe GZ to just try to put it somewhere in the background so it folds the horizon so we don't have just an empty horizon with no details. And at the same time, I'm looking right here so that I can see the final result rotate on the z-axis GZ. One thing that you will notice is that if you focus right here, there is some sort of clipping going on. Or actually let's jump to the normal shading view or the solid viewport shading. As I mentioned, notice that there is some sort of clipping right here. So we need somehow to fix this problem. And actually the easiest way to do such thing is basically by going to the tab and from here, jump to wait paint. And what I'm gonna do is basically to paint over all of these areas right here. The areas that I'm painting over right now we're basically will be excluded from the displacement, maybe also from this area right here. I'm just painting on the edges. All right, guys. So all what I did is basically to just paint over the edges of this plane to do that, make sure that your weight is actually one and change the radius wherever however you want and your strength should be at one. After you do that, if you jumped to your vertex group, you will find here a group and let's maybe call it flat underscore areas. And let's jump back to this object mode. Nothing will change except if we jump right now to the Modifiers tab, you will have here something called vertex groups. If you select your flat areas, notice what will happen. Basically the displacement drain now is basically only happening on the edges. The main reason for that is that Blender, if we get back to the white paint mode, we'll use the red areas to be displaced as one. And this gradient is basically, the closer it gets to blue, the closer it gets to 0. So the blue areas, the displacement value will be 0 and the red areas will be one. So we need to invert this map. The easiest way to do this is that if you go to Weights, you will have an option called invert. If you click on it, notice what will happen. We basically converted everything so that the edges right now are blue, which means 0. And they will basically grade D8 or gradually go to red, which means they will gradually go to a displacement value of one. Let's jump back to the object mode and notice that we basically got rid of all of these clipping that took place right here. They are basically right now flat. And we fixed that issue here. So yeah, that's pretty cool I think. And let's move this a little bit down on the z-axis, maybe scale it a little bit on the z-axis also. Well, let's just scale it. Overrule. Hit seven to jump to the top view so that you have a better view. Let's do this, right? We will look something like this if we jump forward in our camera movement. I think also we need to have some mountains right here. So let's just do that. Let us move to this frame 240. Instead of hitting Shift D, you can hit Alt. The which will basically create an instance will be faster to render Shift D will duplicate all of the different datas. Aldi will create a linked copy. Let's put it somewhere right here, and let's maybe just change the rotation to something like this. I want to have some sort of a flat area that looks just like this. I wanted to I don't want it to be distracting. Let's actually, I think looking pretty sick if you asked me. All right, let's jump to let's see our camera animation or other areas we need to fill. And yeah, we probably need another mountain from here. So make sure you select your plain old D to create a linked copy it seven to jump to the top view. And let's just move it. If we scrub through our animation to look something just like this. If you ask me, this is actually looking pretty sick. Now to fix the rest of the problems related to these planes is that we need to basically shape them to the same way we shaded these mountains to do such thing, it is actually super simple. All you have to do is basically to select one of these planes. Let's jump to the shader editor in from here, select your mountain and you will have an option basically to new material which will create a new material based on this material. So let's click on it and let's call it, for example, mountains and your score back ground. And because we're using a displacement modifier, we won't need this entire node tree which is related to displacement. And we won't need the multiply and displacement node. All we need is basically just our normal shading setup. And also I don't need this one. So x Delete, and let's move this bad boy right here. So basically we deleted the entire mapping setup in this new material because we don't need it, as I mentioned, because we're displacing this plane by using our usual displacement modifier. And you will have a resolve that looks just like this, which if you ask me, it looks pretty good. You can play with different settings for all of these mountains like changing, for example, the strength or lower than it down. Let's try for example, 1.5. I will just keep it at one because that's the default value. You can go wild for this and basically create wherever you want. That's just myself preference for this shot or my taste. But yeah, by doing this, we basically finalize the look of this short in terms of like the biggest elements. And in the next couple of videos, basically we will fix the lighting, maybe add a dramatic sky to make this whole thing more beautiful. Then we will learn how to render it. See you everyone in the next video. 17. World Lighting: Hello and welcome. In this video where we'll basically fixed the lighting of our scene. What I mean by that is basically to add a sky and all of that in your shader editor, make sure to switch from object to world. And basically right now, blender to lighten our scene is basically just using the built-in HDRI that we selected right here. But we don't want that. We need to create our own sky because as you probably know, we can trend are using this one in the last couple of videos or actually in the last couple of chapters most of the time knew some HDRI is too light in our scene, but in this case we will be using the built-in sky texture that blender comes shipped with. So here's what we're gonna do, go Shift a and here we will look for a sky texture. Now we'll just plug it to color. Nothing will happen. And the main reason for that, because we're still using our HDRI right here. So make sure to check scene world and you will have a resolve that looks just like this. Now of course, it is too intense and here's the magic of the sky texture inside of Blender. First of all, you do have multiple presets. In my experience, if you won't like the most settings and the most freedom to that you to a certain extent can nail the look that you're looking for. Most of the time you will find yourself using the initiator sky. Most of the settings right here are kind of self-explanatory sand size, which would basically control how big the disk of the sun is an intensity. It is kind of self-explanatory and we already know it from adding the sunlight into the scene and sudden elevation, which to a lot of people might be a little bit complicated or not like they're intuitive because actually what we mean by elevation is how high the sun in the sky. And by controlling how high the sun is in the sky, you can basically control the time of the day. For example, if I start dragging this number down, I will start going to sunset or sunrise and vice versa. If I start bumping this number up, I will go more toward noon and all of that. So yeah, this is the slider which will basically allow you to control what time of day your sky will look like in rotation, the direction of your sun, altitude, which depends on how high your object is from sea level and actually will be changing this number later on. And some other couple of settings like air and dust and ozone, to be honest, I've never changed them for wherever reason, whenever I change them, it just ruined the entire result. So maybe you can experiment with them. And here's my workflow to define a good lighting setup to this scene. First of all, I will start with the sun rotation. I lock my son in terms of rotation and I start polishing it and start changing the setting until I get the look I want from a certain angle. Because the worst thing that you can do is basically to just keep experimenting and keep experimenting without actually getting any good result. So it is always good to lock yourself and basically tried to get the best result possible from certain angle. And if it didn't work, then you can go to change other settings. And I will start with sand rotation. Let's start dragging this number up. And as you can see, my son right now it is somewhere right here and you probably can see a small disk right here, but I'm going toward more of a light, a light that will be hitting this part of the mountain. So I will keep bringing this number up until I think some thing, Let's for example, say 230. And yeah, I really like this kind of lighting setup. I think I want to see how it will look like during the animation. So I will come right here and just drag over the top to add another editor. And I will change it from the shader to who? The timeline. And let's see if I scrub through my animation. Yeah, that's pretty good. I think right now I will start basically changing the sun elevation or actually before that, let's change the altitude because our mountain art somewhat high. Considering the level, I will take the altitude, for example, to 10 thousand, which mean I know 10 thousand. It's not realistic and there is no mountain in Earth which has lie 10 thousand meter from the sea level. I think like the Mount Everest is actually just 8849 meters from the sea level. We are in Blender so we can do whatever we want. Right now I will change, I think the Sun and density because it is too strong and I will start dragging this number way, way down until I get something, let's say 0.12. And I'm getting this really cool blue result, which I really like for the same size. Let's try to bring it a little bit up. Let's say one which would just make the whole lighting just feel softer. And for the sun elevation, what about we start to basically lower it a little bit down, something like 0.1. I don't care about how the sky look for now because actually will be replacing that sky with another one. What we will be doing is basically to use the lighting that is coming out of this setup, the sky texture, then she just Sky texture. And for the actual look of this guy, we will be using another image or another HDRI. That's what we will do. By doing this right now we finalize the look of these mountains and I'm pretty satisfied with this result. The only thing I feel like I need to do still, these mountains are really sharp and they doesn't look that good. I will get back to my normal shader by changing from world to object and make sure you select your main mountain. And from here, I think I will give a little bit of breathing room also to the remover, just so that I make the mountain feels a little bit more flat, which this doesn't look good. All right, What about we start experimenting with the bass mountain with the rug of variation number one, I will give it a little bit of breathing room. All right, everyone, so I ended up changing these values right here from they were really contrasty. So I just gave them a little bit more of a breathing room so that I remove those sharp edges that used to be right here on the main mountain. I think that this result fits better. They aesthetic were looking for, yeah, that's basically it for how I created this guy and the general lighting setup for my scene. And then the next video, I will show you how you can add another sky to basically change this just blue sky with another more moody or dramatic sky. Yeah. See you there. 18. Adding The Sky: Hello and welcome everyone in this video, where we will basically add another sky to our scene. Now of course, probably the easiest way for a lot of people will be just to like to change the world and they will import any HDRI right here. But unfortunately, Blender doesn't have such feature. You will need to replay the sky texture but just doom. Understand what we want to do. We want the lighting that is coming out of our sky texture better the same time we need to replace this guy to a lot of people may sound a little bit confusing, but you will just understand what we want in a second. So here's what we're gonna do. First of all, we need to remove the sky that is right here. And we already learned how to do such thing basically by going to the render settings and inside of film, which is this one right here, you will find an option called transparent. Just make sure to check it. And bam, we removed our sky right now. Whatever we want to put right here in the background, it will act a sky. But here's the catch. Previously we used to just import flat planes and slab sky texture on them to act like the sky. But we need more variety in this scene for one just very simple reason, which is that our camera is rotating. So we basically need to fit this entire horizon where the sky, there are multiple approaches. Some people might like just for example, on port a cylinder and project the sky image onto it. But here's the easiest way that I figured it out. Basically we need to import this sphere or actually to create a sphere. So go shift a mesh and UV sphere. It is pretty small right now. So for example, let's crank this number to something like one hundred, ten hundred meter. So it is like basically really huge ball. I think 1000 meter will be enough for the segments and rings. I will crack them to one hundred, one hundred. So it is a pretty smooth sphere and hit enter, and I will go with the right mouse button and shade smooth, hit seven to jump to the top view. And for example, let's try to put it somewhere right here. And I think the size of this fear is to certain extent pretty small because I wanted to cover the entire scene. So hit S to scale it and just scale it up, something just like this. Everything is black right now because there is no light inside this sphere. But here's what we're gonna do. First thing, let's come back to the world or actually to the object mode. I will select the sphere and I will create a new material and I will call it sky and hit Enter. What we will do is basically that we will import NHGRI and plug it to the surface. I will delete this principle, BSDI because we don't need it x, I will go Shift A Search Image, Image, Texture. I'll put it right here. Click on Open and inside the Resources folder or actually the images folder, you will find something called fish heroic beach to 2k EXL. And that's actually NHGRI that I downloaded from HDRI Haven double-click on it. And if I take the color and plug it to the surface, notice what will happen. We basically projected this HDRI onto the surface or actually into the sphere, are actually on the sphere. So basically right now if I also jump right here to the render view, I will basically be able to control this HDRI just by rotating this one right here. I can move it, I can do whatever I want. And basically what we're doing is that we're doing the same thing as NHGRI, only the HUD or right? It is a huge sphere that we can't see. It is a virtual sphere inside of Blender. But in our case, we just created a sphere and we will make it act like just NHGRI. So yeah, the more, you know, but here's the catch blender right now is also using this sphere to light in our scene, or actually it is using the texture or the HDRI that we projected on the surface of a sphere. As an HDRI, we need to tell blender some have at, Hey, we only want to see it, but we don't want it to influence the lighting of the scene. The good thing it is not that really complicated actually to do such thing. Let's go to the object properties from here and also make sure you selected your sphere and invisibility and Ray visibility. You will have multiple options right here, uncheck all of them. And basically the sphere is basically right now, kind of disappeared. Let's make it visible to our camera because we want to see it, and that's all we only want the camera to see it. We don't want neither to see it's diffuse because it will affect the lighting. You don't want to see anything that is coming out of this picture. The only thing we want is that the camera to see it, but we don't want it to influence any other thing. If you don't know by doing this right now, we basically just slab that sky background right there in the background without actually affecting the lighting of our scene. The only thing that you will notice that we need to do is that there are some sort of buildings and all of that right here, but it is actually pretty easy to fix. Just hit R and just rotate it a little bit on the z-axis until they are basically visible and it will look something like this. And if I start scrubbing through my timeline, it will look something like this. And I think there is some sort of amount right here. So I will also hit j and x0 to only move it on the z-axis. And I will move it a little bit down and it will look something just like this. Let's also get back to the first frame to see whether there are some sort of building that popup right here on the horizon. And I think this is looking pretty sick. I think I will get back here to my solid view and just in order to hide the sphere to minimize this kind of mess right here, because we want to see our scene inside the sphere, inside the Viewport Display, you will have here an option called display. As by default it is textured and that's why we're seeing the clay model of the sphere. I will change it from textured to either wire, where you will see the wireframe of the sphere, but it is too dense for my taste. I will like actually just change it to bounce, which will create a cube which present the bounding box of our 3D sphere. And by doing this, you will be able to see your 3D scene that is inside the sphere. And by doing this, everyone, We've finished like to a certain extent, the general look of the shot in terms of lighting by using our new sheet of sky that we learned in the previous video. And also by using a custom sky to fill the horizon with and not just likes him. Very simple, minimalistic blue sky that comes out of the initiator sky, and that's basically it for this video, I will see you in the next one. Everyone. 19. Adding Clouds: Hello and welcome. In this new video where we will basically start adding some clouds right here in the mountains. Now of course, there are multiple approaches to do such thing, but I think the easiest way will be to just add volume, which will act like our clouds. So here's what we're gonna do. Let's zoom in on our scene and we will basically add a simple cube. So go shift a mesh cube, the dot and the number pad to zoom on this object, hit Tab g, z, one to move it in the z-axis by one meter and hit Enter, then Tab again to exit. And by doing this, we basically move the anchor point or the origin of our object into the bottom face. And right now when we scale it, it will always scale from the bottom up. So let's zoom out a little bit and just hit S and start scaling this object. We want it to be huge. Let's say something like this. It doesn't matter the size in terms of the z-axis because we will scale it down so it s z and scale it way, way down, scale z and till it looks something like this. So basically the surface of the clouds will be the surface of the cube. Now will come the trickiest part, which is basically creating the shader. So first things first, our cube, basically we deform it in all sorts of ways. So make sure to go Control a and apply the scale. And let's start shading everyone. I will also change this to the shading view or to the Render View. Click on New to create a new material and let's call it clouds when it comes to create and volumes, we basically we can't use the principle be SDF. We need to use a different shader, which is gold, the principled volume. Let's put it right here and then we'll take the volume and luggage to the volume. It will turn to something looks somehow like foam because yeah, it is too dense and all of that. But we will fix this in a second. And that basically by controlling the density slider, as you can see, but we need to add more variety to the wave. This density works. Here's what we're gonna do. I won't go Shift a and I will add a noise texture. I will hit Control T to add a mapping setup to it. We already did all of that before. So it is pretty self-explanatory and they will take the factor and plug it to the density control shift and click on the noise texture to see how it looked like. And I think I will bring the scale a little bit up to something like 15. I think I'm going to lower the details a little bit to something like 1.5. And let's add a little bit of distortion, something like 0.5. So in terms of view to a certain extent, it is somehow similar to the distribution of the clouds. But even with that, I think I need to crank the contrast a little bit up. So the best way to do that is by going shift a, and let's just look for a color ramp. It will put it somewhere right here and Control Shift and click on your principal PSD F to see how it looked like. Or actually let's see after the color ramp and let's basically just start cranking. The contrast. Looks something just like this. I really liked this distribution. I think after you do that, Let's get back to our principal volume. And this is how our clouds is looking like right now. It doesn't look that good because the color right now it is some sort of gray. So make sure to put it up to white. And by doing this, you do have your clouds. That simple actually. And basically the motor start cranking the contrast right here, the more this fog will be less than and more cloudy. And I like this result right here. So I'm gonna stick to this result. And yeah, that's basically it for how I created the clouds in these mountains. That's it for me for this video. And I will see you in the next one where we will basically break down this scene into different render layers. 20. Background Mountains: Hello and welcome everyone in this new video where we will basically finalize the look of this shot. Now here's the thing to a certain extent, or actually to a large extent, this scene right now is finished and probably you can go to the rendering setup. But there is something that I really hate about blender, which is that when using the displacement modifier for whatever reason it doesn't work that good. And it gives you like these weird beaks right here. And actually even if we maximize this editor, you will notice that there are some really sharp edges for whatever reason taking place on the top of the mountains. The mountains exactly where we're basically just using the displacement modifier. This doesn't look good and I feel like it is killing the potential of this chart. So we need to figure out a solution for this. Now, of course, to some people, this probably would be the ideal solution, especially if you don't have enough computing power and such case, I will stick to the result you're seeing right now. But in case you do have a little bit more of a juice, I think we can make the scene it will look better in terms of the mountains that are as background. And that's what we will do. So here's the thing I will rename all of these objects. For example, let's start with this one and I will call it background underscore mountain, underscore 01. This one will be hit F2 to rename it back ground underscore mountain. And for this one same thing, F2 to rename it, and let's call it background mountain 03. I will select the three of them, hit M to move them to a new collection. Click on New Collection and let's call it back ground. And your score, mountains and rescore displacement modifier. This collection is basically responsible for our background mountains that are using the displacement of fire. And I think I'm just going to disable it because they don't need it and you will have a result looking like this. Now for filling the background, I will basically just duplicate this bass mountain, the big mountain. And here's how we're gonna do that. Hit seven to jump to the top view, hit Shift D to duplicate it. And maybe let's put it somewhere right here. And as you can probably remember, if you focus on our camera, it will go to like a direction like this. So what I will do is basically to go rotate on the z-axis by hitting Z 45-degree. And I will put it somewhere right here. Right now, what I will do is basically to scale the spleen a little bit more in the z-axis or actually in the y-axis. So hit S double. Why do only scale it in the local y-axis? And it will just make it a little bit bigger in a way that it will cover the entire horizon. But what you will notice if I click on the render view right here, and let's maybe hide this sphere which acting as the sky. You will notice that our mountain is really stretched. It makes sure to select it, it Control a to apply the scale and click on Scale and you will have a resolve that looks just like this. Now, here's the most important thing we need to bring a little bit of variety to these mountains because right now they are a duplicate basically of the main mountain. So here's what I'm gonna do by selecting this mountain and make sure you are in the shader editor. Click on this really small icon right here, which will basically duplicate this material. So right now we do have two different materials. And most importantly, let's change its name, for example, to a mountain and your score back ground. So right now we do have two different replicas of these mountains. And the most important thing is basically to change the location of this texture. So if I drag over the three different location axis, x, y, and z, and I taught for example, 300. Notice what will happen. We basically changed the distribution of all of these different mountains. Let's try, for example, to go for 50. And I actually really liked this formation right here. And here's where we're going to do. Let's rotate it a little bit and maybe let's hit G to move it somewhere right here, rotated a little bit Gy to only move it on the local axis. The thing that you will note it, there is some sort of clipping going right here. Unfortunately, the only option we do have right now is basically to move it a little bit down on the z-axis until we hide it. So a j, z and move it a little bit down until it looks something just like this. Now of course my viewport is pretty slow, so I'm going to change to the viewport shading GZ. Let's see What about to bring it a little bit up, a little bit down. I think I'm going to change the location to something like 100. Let's see. Now there is some sort of clipping that will take place right here. Let's try 150 US change to the render view, basically for people who are wondering what I'm doing. I'm trying to find a formation that will act the background. And I don't want to have these really harsh lines that are right here. I only want them to be mountains. And I think my best option right now is basically to also scale it a little bit on the x-axis. So hit S XX to only scale it on the local x-axis. And I will scale it a little bit up, something just like this and hit Control a. And let's apply the scale. I will get back right here, Two, Three, 100, and that's actually looking way, way better. Let's hit seven to get back to the top view. And I think I'm going to rotate this, something just like this. Let us see in 3D viewport how it will look like. I'm going to hit our double white only rotate it on the local y-axis. And I'm just going to rotate it just a little bit until you get something that looks just like this. Let's get back right here in the 3D Viewport. Let's say G YY to only move it on the y-axis. And maybe let's try, for example, 500, let's try 400. This doesn't look good. Let's try 100. That's not bad, but I think I'm going to add 150, which I already use dynamin 200. Well, this actually looking pretty good at 20, let's hit seven. And yeah, I really liked this result. I think what if I disabled the removal right here? How will it look like? So hit em, it will look flat again because let's, for example, disable this multiply node that is in the end, which is responsible to adding this kind of path right here, hit M to mute it. Basically right now it will all be just a mountain formation. And maybe let's say G, YY to also move it on the y-axis, the local y-axis. And let's see how it will look at start to look something like this and how it will look at the end will look something just like this. Now, I will restore my sphere 120. All right, not bad, not bad at all except I think I'm going to change this to 300. And for the background mountains, I'm going to hit G double white only move it on the local y-axis because I basically want some mountains to cover this part that is right here. If I jump right now to frame number one, I need to scale it even a little bit on the local y-axis. So SY, why again, scale it up or actually let's hide also the sky again. And let's zoom out as YY, something just like this, control a and apply the scale. There are some mountains right here, I think let's hit G YY to only move it on the local y-axis. Let's say something just like this. What about frame 240? And that's actually looking pretty sick for my taste. And I will get back to my sphere again. Again. I know there was a lot of tweaking for this background mountains to basically let them fit in the aesthetic we want. But I think it is worth the shot because this is the result we're getting right now. And here's the result we used to have miles better, especially when you consider the really ugly look of these mountains right here. So I will stick to this copy of my procedural mountain shader. By doing this, we're finally ready in the next video to break down this scene into different layers. Yeah. See you everyone in the next video. 21. Rendering Layers: Hello and welcome. In this video where we will break down our scene into different layers. Now, as you probably remember, the first thing is that we need to put each object into its own collection. But before we do that, here's how I'm imagining the setup of the render to be. First of all, we will have one layer that is only meant for the sky, another one that is meant for the background mountains, and another one for the main mountain and another one for the clouds. And beside all of these, we will have another pass, which is called a mixed pass. And the main reason for that is that when we finally start composing this shot, we really want to create some atmospheric depth to the scene so that in a logical way, the farthest mountains that are right here in the background should be like way more foggy and it doesn't look that sharp. And that's what the midst best will allow us to do. Of course, it is some sort of cheating and it is a cheap way to achieve such Look the right way will be basically to just add huge volume that was covered the entire scene and all of that. But this will make your render time exponentially, really, really long and we don't want that. Yeah, first of all, let's start breaking down all the different layers that we will need. First of all, this cube, which is I think responsible for the clouds. Let's double-click on it and let's call it Clouds hit M to move it to a new collection, and let's call it also clouds and hit, Okay, now for this sphere which is basically the sky, hit empty, move it to a new collection and call it Sky Mountains zeros 01, it is actually the background mountains. So double-click on it and let's call it back ground mountain empty. Move it to a new collection and let's call it back ground and rescore mountain and hit Okay, the last thing which is the main mountain, we already named it mountains. So at m new collection and let's call it mountain and hit. Okay, for this main collection, I will change its name to scene. And by doing this right now, we do have all of our different collection and we're ready to start breaking the scene two different layers. The first layer will be the sky. So let's rename this to sky. Hit Enter and dual, disable all the collections except the sky, and it will look something like this. Let's click on this small button right here, Copy Settings. And this one will be meant for the back ground and rescore mountains and hit Enter. It is kind of self-explanatory. We only want the mountain, the background mountains to be visible, which will be something looking just like this. Click on this small button again, Copy Settings. This will be for the main underscore mountain, and we only want the main mountain to be visible unless they, but not least, let's create another copy, Copy Settings and let's call this clouds and hit Enter. And we only want the clouds to be visible right here. And lastly, but not least, I will create another collection or actually another layer Copy Settings. And I will call this, for example, master. And in this layer what I will do is basically to activate all the objects which are mountain and the background mountain. I'm actually not all the objects, only the mountains. And the main reason I'm doing this is that I will use this master collection basically to render my mask paths. You will understand that in a second. Let's just review all the different layers. So we do have this guy, it will look something like this. Perfect. We have the background mountains which will look something like this. Also perfect. We do have the main mountain which will look something like this. Perfect. The clouds. Yeah, here's an important thing. Basically, the clouds will not be in the inside of the mountains in a funny sort of way. So it is important from here to check this option which called hold-out. And what I'm going to do is basically to enable the background mountain and the mountain and just change them to hold out so that your clouds would be looking something like this. And that's how your Cloud render is supposed to look like. The clouds shouldn't be right here on the mountains, should only be visible somewhere right here and these valleys and all of that. And finally, this be our master layer. And yet by doing this, we broke down this scene into its different rendering layers. I will see you in the next video where we will prepare the composite tree node tree that we will use to render our scene with. Yeah, see you in the next video. 22. Rendering Node Setup: Hello and welcome. In this new video, where we will basically prepare the composite or node tree that we will render our scene width. So first things first, make sure to jump to your compositor. Check Use nodes, and let's start creating the new tree. We won't, we already discussed a lot of concepts in previous video when it comes to setting up the compositor. So I'm not going to explain each and every single step. I'm just going to show you how we will do it. So first things first, I think we need our denoising data. We need to check the noise in every render layers. And I will select denoising data, will move to background mountains and check denoising data, main mountain denoising data, clouds, de-noising data. For the master. I'm not actually going to check denoising data that I'm going to check missed and you will understand what we will do in a second. Let's right now we'll start breaking down this node tree. So first things first, I will delete this composite node because I don't need it for the rendered layers. We will start with the sky, so I'll go Shift a and look for denoise. First of all, d noise, I will take the image to the image, the denoising normal to the normal and the denoising albedo, albedo. I will go Shift a and look for file output, and I will put it right here. And that will take this image and plug it to image for this file output node. First of all, let's select a path. Blender will give you the panel to pick a folder and I will create a new folder and I will call it Sky, enter inside it and hit Accept. So basically right now, all of our sky images will be saved into this folder. After you do this, make sure to select your file output node it, and to open the sidebar in properties, we need to change a couple of settings right here. As I mentioned before, most of the time we will be using the PNG quantity to render our scene with. But actually this is one of the rare occasion where we will not use PNG, but actually we will be using the Open XR. And the most important thing is that we need to change the codec from zip lossless to D WA a lossy. The good thing about this codec is that it will basically give us a lot of freedom when it comes to editing the photos better. The same time, we will not have huge file sizes. The main reason I'm doing that because we will need to a certain extent, some level of flexibility in editing our final shots. So by using this conduct, we will be setting up ourselves for success when it comes to the compositing process for the file path, make sure to change it to sky underscore and hit Enter. I will hit Enter to close the sidebar. And the most important thing is that I will select this entire setup. I will hit Shift D. I will put it right here and I will change from sky to background mountains. And from here I will create a new folder and I will call it back ground underscore mountains accept it and open the properties of this node. And let's change the name from sky to back. Ground underscore mountains and hit Enter. Same thing. Let's duplicate it another time shift D. And from here I will change to main mountain, create a new folder and call it main underscore mountain. Accept and rename this to main mountain Shift D Another time. And let's go with clouds. And from here let's create a new folder and call it Clouds. Hit Accept and rename it from here, two clouds underscore and hit Enter, select all of them, shift D one last time. And from here from clouds, Let's change the semester. I will delete the denoising data because they don't need it. And instead of taking the image and plugging it to this file output, I will actually take the midst and plug it right here. And from here, let's create a new folder and I will call it missed, enter inside it. And I will rename this node from clouds to missed Andrew score. So our midst render will be rendered right here. And make sure you select Master and hit N. And By doing this, we broke down our scene into its different rendering layers. And right now we will be ready to start rendering the scene. But before we do any of that, it is time we change and we nailed our render settings for the best result. And that's actually what we will be doing in the next video. So without any further I do. I will see you in the next video where we will change our render settings to optimize our render time as much as possible. See you there. 23. Render Settings: Hello and welcome. In this video where we will change a couple of render settings for our shot. First things first, let's change the overrule rendering settings that will work for the entire scene cycles experimental GPU compute for the viewport. We don't need it for now and it is time to see our render samples. And that's actually the most trickiest part. Our scene is huge, especially after we duplicated this entire shader, the number that I will be using, it will be a little bit overkill for a lot of people, but it will give us the best result possible, which is 256. But here's the thing. Based on my experiments actually, I was able to render this scene even at 64 samples, but it was a little bit noisy. Don't get me wrong. But after the denoising process, it looked pretty good for my taste, for the max samples. You can also drop it down to something like 64. If you're noticing that you will have really, really long rendering times, that for me, I will stick to 256 for the light paths total 12, it is overkill in my opinion, So I will drop it to eight. Keep moving down for the volumes. By default, the step rate render. The higher this number will be, the more you're lowering the resolution of your volume or in our case, of the clouds. So if you feel like your volume or your clouds are really slowing down, the render makes sure to bring this number, which is called step rate render to something like four or eight. But please remember that you will be lowering the resolution of the clouds inside the render settings. You will have an option right here called the advanced cold subdivision. Make sure insight for this dicing render rate, render for the offscreen scale, you can probably take it even to something like ten because it is basically the scale of the elements that are in outside of this camera view. And by doing this, basically we will have fast renderers and the other thing for your days in camera makes sure to select your camera so that Blender basically will put more computation power into this really basically close backgrounds and less computational power for the really far backgrounds. And that's basically it for our general rendering settings. Let's see the file output, even though we already plugged in all the different settings right here in the compositor. Let's just check what do we have right here. And yeah, everything seems to work fine. Just as a small reminder, if you want to only render it at 7720, you can drop this number to something like 50% it by doing this, we're ready right now to change a couple of settings when it comes to the layers. And most importantly, if you remember, we plugged the rendering samples 256. But the thing that you will just noticed is that why do I need 256 samples? Just render a simple sphere with an image on it. And that's why if you go to your layer properties and go down, down, down, you will have an option called override, basically the number that you will plug right here and the sample it will cancel the number that we plugged for the entire scene. So for example, if I plug right here too for this layer, the sky layer blender, it will only use two samples to render the sky or the sphere. And that's actually a really helpful setting aside of Blender for this guy. Actually, you can probably even go with something like just one. But in my case, I will just keep it at two. It is more than enough in our case, let's see for the background mountains, for the background mountains by default it is, as you remember, 256. So I will drop this number to something like 128. It is basically the health for our main mountain. I will keep it at 0, which means that Blender will use the main rendering samples, which is 256. I will keep it at 0 for the clouds, I will keep it also at 256 because I want them to be a really detailed and Leslie, but not least for the master, I will drop this number way, way down to something like to the main reason I'm doing this, because the only reason I'm rendering actually this layer is that I will take the midst pass out of it. What do we mean by mess paths? That's actually what we will prepare in the next video. So without any further I do. I will see you in the next one where we will change the different setting and the best. See you there. 24. Mist Pass: Missed best is an image that looks just like this. And some people might wonder what is the point of views in it? It is actually, if you think about it in a logical way, when we overlay it over our image or over our render and change the contrast of it. We will be able to add this effect that looks just like fog. And what we will do in this video is basically to change a couple of settings to basically render a really good missed past that will allow us later on to create some missed. The most important thing is that as you remember in the master layer, we already enabled an option called Myst. And right now we need to go to our camera properties from here, inside the Viewport Display, you will find two options which are limits and missed. Let's see how it will look like. So we do have right here our solid view. If you check limits and missed, you will notice that a blender will basically show you this really long line. And right here close to the camera, you will notice that there are two different points, which will basically tell blender from where it should start calculating your message pass. So here's what we're gonna do from here, makes sure to jump to your, actually your world settings. And you will have here an option called Miss paths, which will basically control the start and the depth. And here's how it work, the start point, and if you notice, it will basically start moving one of these two points. It will basically control where the fog or where the message will start to be visible. So in our case, I want the midst and I think I'm going to jump to the render view just to see the result better. I want the mess, for example, to be to start, It's something around, let's say 100 meter. And the next slider, which has depth mean wet, is the point where basically the entire scene will become like fully opaque. It will be 100% for gate. So if I start dragging this number up, which will basically move this point at this point right now Blender, we'll basically, the midst paths will basically be completely white and we can't see anything. And in my case, I think I'm going to put this number at 1200, which I think it will be good for now. So yeah, after 100 meter away from the camera, we will blender will start creating mist or start calculating the midst pass. And at 1200 meters or one kilometer and 200 meter, it will be 100% fully opaque. It is actually that easy to set up the mess. Pass. The trickiest part about it is that some people may not block the right numbers right here, but here's the thing. It doesn't take a long time to render a mask paths. And as you can probably remember, we only plug two samples on it comes to rendering this mist. So it will be good even if you plugged the wrong numbers all overhead and all of that, you can keep experimenting until you get the path that works for your shot. But yeah, in our case, one hundred and twelve hundred will be good. And by doing this, we finished basically preparing all the different elements to render this shot. The only thing that you should do right now is basically to jump in both editors to the solid view so that we optimize, so that we save a little bit of memory for Blender when it comes to rendering, makes sure also to save your file by hitting Control S. Just go to Render and Render Animation. And right now it is just a matter of like keeping your computer maybe render overnight on the hope that in the morning you will find your scene ready for you to start compositing. So yeah, render your scene. And I will see you everyone in the next video where we will start composing this, sean. Yeah, See you there. 25. Compositing Part I: Hello and welcome. In this new video where we will basically start compositing our shot. And as you probably remember, I always like to start a fresh blender seen when it comes to compositing. So let's exit and let's go directly to compositing while bringing my timeline and let a bit down. And I will check Use nodes from here, I will delete the render layers by hitting X and also the reading, the composite, I will go to add input image sequence. And in the background mountains are actually in my render folder. I will start by importing first of all, the sky, select the first image, import image sequence, and let's put it right here. Same thing. I will go add input image sequence. I will input the background mountains important image sequence at input image sequence, main mountain import image sequence. And I will put it right here at input image sequence. And I will take my clouds right now. We'll put it right here, add input image sequence, and right now my Miss pass and import image sequences that will put it right here. So here's our sky hit V. If you want to make the previous smaller. This is our background mountain, this is our main mountain, this is the clouds, and this is our midst pass. So let's start first of all, laying them over each other, which we already learned in previous videos, which basically by using a node called Alpha over. So let's add alpha over there. We'll put it right here. Right now it is laying the white color over the first image or over the sky. So I will take my background mountain and plug it to the image number two, make sure to check convert pre-multiplied Shift D to your alpha over two. Duplicate it. Let's put the main mountain over. Shift D again for your Alpha over and let's put the clouds on top. And lastly, but not least, go Shift D to duplicate the alpha over one last time. And let's actually plug the image. And actually, I shouldn't duplicate the Alpha over. I should use a mixed node, so I will change it with a mix. Take the image to the first socket and this second socket. And for the blending mode, make sure to change from mixed to screen. Control Shift and click on it and it will look something like this. But actually for now, I will disable this one by hitting M because I want to change a nail the coloring of this shot then I will add them as pass. So yeah, let's start just doing that. But before I do any of that, I want to make all of these previews a little bit smaller. So I save a little bit of screen space so I can't work freely. Also, by the way, you can select all of your nodes and hit S to scale them, which will basically make them get closer to each other. I will move them somewhere right here. If you select your view where you will be able to move this image and I will put it somewhere right here on the top. And if I zoom right here, it will look something like this. And I select all of the nose, scale them a little bit up. All right, that's looking pretty good for now and pretty neat. Let's basically just start changing the general look of this shot. First thing I want the sky to be a little bit more contrasty. So here's what I'm going to do after this. I'm going to go Shift a and add our RGB curves. And I will put it right here. And what I want to do is basically to make it way more contrasty by creating an S-curve are actually not an S-curve. It is like parable or whatever they call it. And it will look something just like this. And I think I'm going to lower a little bit of red so that I give more of a silent look to it. And that's actually looking pretty sick if you ask me, what about if we add a little bit of blue and maybe lower the green so that we add a little bit of magenta to it. I will collapse it and if you hit M to mute it. So this is the before and this is the after, this is the before, and this is the after. And I really liked this result except I feel it is like a little bit too saturated. So I'm going to go Shift a and add saturation, saturation value. I will put it right here for the saturation, Let's try, for example, 0.9, which will basically just make it a little bit desaturated, which I think it fits better than aesthetic we're looking for. So yeah, that's basically it for our sky. Let's move on right now to the background mountains, which I will go also RGB curves. I will put them right here after the background mountains. And what I want to do is basically just bumps, bump them a little bit up. That's not how they're supposed to look in real life because they should be forget that I'm relying on my Miss best to do this job, and that's all what I'm gonna do for the background mountains. I might also go Shift a and add hue and saturation value. Let's put it right here and I'm going to drag this iteration a little bit down. Let's say something like 0.85, and I will put them right here. Let's move in right now to the main mountain. And after that, the clouds for the main mountain, I think you've already guessed it. Go Shift a and let's add the same thing, RGB curves, I will put them right here, and let's just try to make, make them a little bit more contrasty. That's looking pretty sick. I think I'm not gonna change anything when it comes to the colors, I will give them like this. Or actually I'm going to desaturate them a little bit. So go hue saturation value. I will put them right here and I will bring this iteration something like 0.8. Lastly, but not least, let's move on to the clouds, which surprisingly I'm not gonna change anything about the clouds. I will just give them like this. And also by the way, if you think like they doesn't fit the aesthetic and you're looking for, you can mute this alpha over and you will remove them. Some people might prefer this clean look. In my opinion, I will just keep it because we rendered it and I think we should use it. Lastly, but not least, let's take our screen node, which we already muted before and hit M to add our myths passed. And as you can see, it basically created this sort of fog in our scene. I'm going to go Shift a and let's add, for example, a color ramp. And I will put it right here. And by controlling this slider, you will be able to control where the fog we'll start. Yeah, for example, you can make the fog starts right here and all of that. But actually I don't like it this way because the color ramp, it is just a simple slide controller. But then instead of using the color ramp because it will limit my option when it comes to manipulating this mist paths. I will delete it and instead of that, I'm going to add another RGB curves. I will take the mispriced and plug it to image and take the image and plug it to the screen node. And this node will basically allow me to control in a better way how am I missed pass will look like. So, yeah, let's for example, drop it a little bit, something just like this. Maybe also drag this little bit down. Or actually I'm going to delete this point by pressing this small x. And I'm just going to lower this point a little bit down until it looks something just like this. And if you asked me this looks pretty good. And also maybe you can go in the screen node and if you start lowering the factory, you will basically change the transparency of how much we're using out of this mismatch so it can make it a little bit more subtle. Let say something like 0.4 and this actually looks pretty sick if you ask me, Let's minimize this screen node. And by doing this, we basically composed all the different elements into one image. And then the next video, we will finalize basically the Lux by maybe grading it, adding some chromatic aberration and lens distortion. And after that, you will basically be ready to render your final sequence. Yeah, see you in the next video. Bye everyone. 26. Compositing Part II: Hello and welcome everyone. In the last video of the mountain chapter, where we were basically finalize the look of this shot, this video, we'll be mostly about like some ideas on how you can manipulate this render the way you want. So the first thing I'm going to do is basically after compositing the whole shot, I'm going to go Shift a and just add an RGB curves when it comes to manipulating colors and all of that, the RGB curves is your friend because it will give you a lot of flexibility in manipulating the shot the way you want. And maybe let's add a little bit of more like an S-shaped curve. And the first thing I noticed that there is some sort of magenta tint on this entire shot. So to combat that, let's add a little bit of green, and also let's add a little bit of blue. And maybe also let's lower a little bit the red, which will give you a result that looks something like this, which I kind of like it. And also I might add a hue and saturation. Let's go hue and saturation value. Let's put a two right here. And if you start just hit Shift to start basically changing the hue value in small increments. You can probably give a different feel to this shot, which I really like. This kind of look it right here. It feels like it is a someone who shot or something. So 0.48, I really liked the way this shot looks right now. Maybe let's bring the value a little bit down and that's looks pretty sick or my taste. Other than that, I think it is time to start adding some complimentary effects to finalize this shot, which means it is time to add a vignette. We already discussed multiple times how to add a vignette. So without bothering you with the exact same details, Let's go add input image. Let's put it right here. I will hit open and inside of images, project files, images, you will find gradient, just open it, Control Shift and click on it. That's how it will look like. Let's edit transform node or put it right here. And we basically need to overlay it over the rest of the image. So go Shift a and let's add a mixed node, makes the egg the first socket and plug it right here and take this and plug it right here, Control Shift and click on it. You will have a result that looks something like this. And most importantly, make sure to change it to multiply. Right now it is too strong and it doesn't fit the square or the aspect ratio of our shot. So let's start bringing the scale a little bit up until it looks something like this. And now it is time to change the level of contrast and all of that, which we will basically do by using a curved node. So add curves, Let's put it right here. And if you start bringing this number up, you will basically make your vignette way more subtle. And I think that by doing this, we added a really nice vignette to this shot. And the last thing will be basically to add some lens distortion, which would basically do through going shift a. And let's look for lens distortion. Put it right here. And for the distort, I will put minus 0.01 and it will look something like this. And for the dispersion 0.01 and that's basically it for the entire shot. I might also bring the saturation of the entire scene a little bit down because I feel it is a little bit too saturated. Let's say something like 0.8 or actually 0.85. And also I feel like the clouds are a little bit blown away. I might in this RGB curves, what about we bring them a little bit down, or actually this is the red. So I need to change the overall look. And yeah, I think I like this fits better than aesthetic or looking for. Yeah. By doing this, we composed all the different elements of the shot, we color corrected it. And the only thing that we need to do basically right now is to go Shift a and let's add a final output. Let's take this and put it right here. Let's select a folder, my project through the environment procedural mountain renders and maybe let's call this final and rescore render. And inside of final render, hit Accept in your node properties, which is right here in the properties we don't need basically to render in opening Excel or any of that. So it would be good at P&G. Drop the compression way, way down, maybe also render it at 16 bits. So you have more details. And for the file subpath, let's call it final and rescore mountain underscore and hit Enter. And all we have to do basically right now is to go to Render, Render Animation. It won't take so long before it finishes. Thank you everyone for tuning in to the mountain chapter so far, this is probably the most complex environment that we created. But if you finished it, good job, and I will see you in future chapters B-cell.