For the last few months, I have been working on a project I promised myself 4 years ago I would complete. Two scenes are partially completed. The video above shows part of the arrival scene. I got so excited about how it turned out that I couldn’t wait to show it. You see, I am learning animation as I work on the project. I was stymied about how to create a lot of decent-looking trees behind the highway until I found the video “How to Fake a Large Scale Forest in Blender” by Zacharias Reinhardt. Practicing what I learned in the video has boosted my CGI (computer generated imagery) skills to a “whole nother level.”

Considering that the name of my project is Park Story, knowing how to make trees, grass, and shrubbery is essential. The story is set in late Fall, so I don’t need to put flowers in the scenes. Even if I did, I think Reinhardt‘s method would work really well. I have not tried it for flowers yet, but I did use it to make the render on the right; a grove of Maple trees. The black squares in the render are the result of placing planes too close to each other. The number for transparencies can be increased under the Light Paths panel in Blender, but it only works to an extent. I raised the number to 100 to try removing the upper edge of planes seen in the first render of the beach scene (photo on left), but eventually found it necessary to change the camera animation. Instead of dramatically zooming and circling the figure, I did not move the camera at all. The trees are more important than zooming.