Procedural Landscapes (Shaders) - Blender
A couple of Landscapes that I did for Procedural Shader practice. Most of them are completely shader based (Except the foliage) including the mountains, snow, desert and water. Even the snow in the snowy mountains is fake, which has been achieved using a color-ramp crunching the values of a noise texture and then displacing the UVs on the XY axis in order to fake simulation. Similar tricks have been used for volumetrics, to achieve the most realistic results while keeping render times low and user control high!
Since many elements like the snowflake and particles usually move at a high speed and are subject to motion blur, faking them is easier compared to other elements.
The compositing had individual color correction for each render layer, which were then layered on top of one another. At the end I did a final color correction, vignette and chromatic aberration. The post processing gave the scene a more natural and not so perfect look, which often time breaks the realism.
Final Composition for the desert landscape done using Compositor in Blender.
A mountain scene created similarly to the desert one. The layering is different in the number of layers, but the general technique followed is the same.
Similar to the previous ones, but the snow is on a 2D plane (Noise Texture crunched to an extreme value to get fake snowflakes).
Baked heightmap for the desert terrain.
Screenshot of the final compositor node graph, all elements have been rendered using render layers in different scenes. Moreover, fake volumetrics using the depth pass and more post process effects (Vignette, Chromatic Aberration and Glare) are applied
Viewport screenshot showing the composition of the scene
Screenshot of the shader node setup for the Sand Dunes, completely shader based
Breakdown of the compositing process. This shows various layers that were used in the composite and reusults after each step.