Low Poly Forest

I always wanted to learn Blender & 3D modeling. That's why I choose 3D as a course at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. Through the weeks we learned about navigating blender, physics, lightning, sculpting, rigging, and much more. In the end, we got to choose our own deliverable. I really wanted to make a low poly world. Low poly is a colorful art style that is also not too difficult to master.

First I started sketching. What does my scene look like? What objects are there? In a short span of time, I made some sketches in my notebook. I wanted to make a forest with trees, some objects, grass, and a house.

After I made the sketches I was excited to start building my world. Luckily I kept myself a list with all the shortcut keys so that I can use Blender fast and efficiently. And yes there are a lot of shortcut keys to remember.

I started making the scene. First the big props. The house, the fences, some woodblocks, a lantern, etc.

It was a nice start. Then I focused on making the trees. Since it is a forest there should be a wide range of different trees. I made a few versions. I also made some rocks that can be placed through the scene.

The grass is also important. Otherwise, the scene would be a bit empty. It was still a challenge to generate a lot of grass in the scene but that was a worry for another time.

I place the trees in the scene. I varied the trees in height and width. I also gave them some rotation.

Does the scene look a bit grey? Yes, it's time to give it color! I started making a color palette. Because it's a low poly art style the colors need to be colorful and refreshing. It was fun to make the color palette and try different colors.

Then came the time to draw the scene. Probably the most fun part. Also in this phase, it was a challenge to not overwhelm the scene with colors. The trees where overwhelming and I changed that in a later phase.

I was not really happy with the house. The house didn't fit the scene. So I removed the house and started from scratch. Since it's a forest the house should be built with logs. After a while, I had a nice log cabin in the middle of the woods.

The scene was almost done. The lighting was the next step along with the grass. Generating a lot of grass was a challenge. The solution was using the particle system in Blender to generate all the objects. Otherwise, your pc would fry watching the scene.

Then came the lightning, I tweaked the settings, position, and much more.

Then came the last step. This took such a long time but that was on me. I wanted the shot to be perfect so I spent a lot of time replacing objects and adding some details such as the fallen tree on the fences, the broken fences, etc.

But in the end, I was proud of the end result.

I felt proud. I never used Blender before and in just a few months I learned a lot about the program and its capabilities. I got an 8 for the deliverable and I was happy to make it.