Bamboo Forest

These images utilize custom tools, each has its own page

A culmination of many projects, the Bamboo Forrest is part of a larger series of images I have been creating. While the asset creation like plants, gate, and lanterns was fun, this page will focus on the technical challenges the project brought. Such as two new tools, Slope Accumulation Scatter and Terrain Based Path Generation.

Slope Accumulation Scatter

Traditional scatters require layering noises and masks to create a believable consistency of asset spread. I don't love this look for falling objects, such as leaves. A slope-based mask culls the points, but this does not mimic reality. Instead, leaves tend to gather at the base of steep surfaces.

Inititally this result was generated via vex solver. The solver was slow to calculate and required a preroll after the terrain changed. I optimized and wrapped everything into a single vex node, the scatter now takes roughly 1 second to generate a directable result.

Terrain Based Path Generation

The process of creating the paths in this scene was an exciting challenge. The tool needed to procedurally adjust to the underlying terrain. Walls needed to be built based on the height of the surface on either side of the path. Brick paths needed to become evenly-spaced stairs, based on the steepness of the terrain. Resolution near paths needed to be adjusted to allow for more defined shader displacements.

Once finished and the procedural shaders were created, I laid out the final shots and updated the terrain. The final tool is, I admit, incredibly slow. But only needs to be calculated once the layout has been locked. Preview geo that ran in real time was used to get a feel for the final composition.

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