Creating Procedural Sand Dunes

by CG Cookie in Training


Building realistic landscapes quickly.

Procedural computer graphics are booming right now. For the artists that have spent years painstakingly placing every vertex, laying out every UV, painting every pixel by hand, sculpting each and every detail...procedural creation is a reinvigorating endeavor.

In this course we're exploring a workflow to build believable sand dunes from only 4 ingredients:

  • 1 mesh plane
  • 1 HDRI
  • 1 Camera
  • 1 Material

You will believe in magic again.

Course Highlights

  • Procedural Texture Displacement - Let Blender do more of the modeling for you. 
  • Adaptive Subdivision - Also called "micro displacement", this feature dynamically tessellates your geometry to maximize detail where it's seen in the camera while minimizing and optimizing detail where there isn't enough pixels to support it in your final render.
  • Compositing - Subtle post-processing treatment to push your render that much closer to photo-realism.

What's included in this course

  1. Video: 21min Displacing the Main Shapes
  2. Video: 16min Refining the Detail
  3. Video: 15min Final Touches and Compositing
  4. Video: 8min Convert Material Displacement Geometry

Want more CG Cookie Courses?

If you get inspired and would like to become a CG Cookie member after purchasing this course, send a message to [email protected] and we will be happy to help you set up an annual membership while discounting the amount you paid for this course on Blender Market.  A membership will give you access to our instructors, our community and 100+ CG Cookie Blender courses.  Be sure to mention your Blender Market Order ID and we will take it from there.

For more information, visit cgcookie.com or head over to our Creator Profile here on Blender Market.

Sales 200+
Customer Ratings 3
Average Rating
Dev Fund Contributor
Published almost 5 years ago
Blender Version 2.8
License Royalty Free
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