Video I made showcasing the environment, added some audio to help sell the atmosphere
Progress gif
The grass, with gusts of wind going through
The shader I set up for the grass. Obvious optimization would be to pack the grass mask in the diffuse texture to get rid of a texture look-up.
I needed a cheap way to create the V-formation of geese, and since it would only be visible as a silhouette I could keep it simple. By using the per-instance random node I offset the sine wave for each individual bird.
Since the birds would only be viewed at a great distance, I could get away with a very basic mesh. Using vertex color to mask out certain parts of the mesh, to control the amount of influence the sine wave would have in offsetting the vertices.
I recently went on a camping trip to Sweden. While there we did a 3 day hike in the Swedish highlands. With this project I tried to recreate the feeling and general atmosphere I felt there. Trees with only a few green branches battered by the constant winds and long winters looked gnarly, as if hundreds of years old yet they were only a few meters tall. The ground though looking a dark green from a distance, was surprisingly colorful from up close. Orange and white mosses, bushes with purple and reddish leaves, and a constant buzz of insects. It's clear that summer doesn't last long here, which made it feel extra precious.
Besides this, I also had the personal goal to be more loose in the way I approach the scene and focus mainly on the general composition and colors. The quality of the individual assets was secondary on this project - and I went back to some older projects to grab relevant assets like some of the foliage and tiling textures that I could use. I felt like to really convey the feeling I was aiming for, I needed a short video with some audio as still images didn't really do this for me.
