For me, one of the trickiest parts of achieving my desired level of realism in an alpine scene is the dense underbrush visible between tree groves. This image was intended to help practice getting the density I want to see. I still need to find and collate a full set of realistic plant species for the underbrush, but what I have here seems to be a good start. I've also tried experimenting with better variety in the shore vegetation as the dense reed grasses fade into the water. Thanks for taking a look, on to the next scene!
This is really nice! And you're right the underbrush, especially looking right with distribution is tricky. This is very appealing. However, I do think there should be rocky outcrop slip zones along the hill where rocks have given way and settled into a path down the slope. The lake line is also very well done.
Wow! I like this very, very much! The place would be worth a visit!
Very nice indeed!! Agree with Jordan, that some rocky outcrops would add some variety.
Very nice! Can you share which models you used for the underbrush?
Great result. My only suggestion would be for a few more 'medium' sized trees interspersed around the edges of the larger tree patches
Thanks, everybody! Talus fields and general rockiness are the next things I want to work on. For this iteration the quick erosion I did on the terrain did not have very satisfying flow/deposition/wear outputs so I skipped them for now.
@TU: The underbrush is composed entirely of Xfrog models. There are all three versions of the European Spindle Tree model controlled by the same breakup fractal but with different coverage values so the smaller plants are more widely spread with the bigger ones towards the "middle" of the patches. There are also a population each of Common Hawthorne, Black Elderberry, and a more shrub-like variation of Kanuka.
I think you've nailed it here. No reason to worry at all!
As I am, you are the first critic of your own work. But it's a mighty fine start!
I like to see I'm not the only one who uses that approach to populating the younger species vs older species. As if the grove of the plants is extending with time. I'll have to take a look at this object cause I really like it's appearance in your image for underbrush and clearing brush.
Here is my first draft with incorporating talus fields. I used the flow and deposition output from Daniil's erosion plugin filtered by some color adjust shaders and with some added patchiness to get small areas of shrubbery to break up the large sections of rocks. For a final image I would prune the trees out of the smaller patches since they would need years and years to grow. The talus itself could use some more stone size and color variation. The stones are larger, and rounder, than would be realistic but I really like that there is noticeable texture in the fields that would not be present with smaller rocks.
Excellent work.
I think I've finalized how I want the talus fields to look, at least for this scene. Per other comments on the initial version I also added more steep rock faces as well as a couple smaller evergreen tree variations with slightly expanded coverage versus the main tree clusters. Thanks for taking a look.