In this tutorial, I want to show you how to design a forest with a view of the galaxy

This should be a cozy place like the ones from the movies with the sounds of nature in the background, so let’s get started

The first question is how are we going to do it, and what are we all going to need?

We will have to make our texture first because we want ground, but some of the problems that will occur in this case are also

 textures tiling and repetition

There are several ways to solve this problem

Use noise to add  macro variation

Use different UV scales depending on the distance to the camera

Translate and  rotate the texture and blend it with the original textures

Here is an example of what our texture looks like and how we want it to look


For more details about that please check this tutorial 

I guess you already have your texture, so we’ll start by downloading the macro variation from here

Let's create new material

We now turn to one of the priorities in building our project.
The first thing we need to know are the texture coordinates that we will simply add with search options type texco 

Next we will use multiply in 2 ways in combination with the parameter and individually to stylize our texture.
We will leave this for later because we can get the same results or even better

Below we will add a texture sample,  we will need this for the macro variation the macro variation itself is an adjustment to the settings in the multiply


We will use one add here with the following settings 0.376
Add another texture sample and one multiply which we will combine with the texture and add

We also use a normal map and associate it with a normal map as well as the original texture with base color


Now we have our texture and our ground is almost done

Let's go back to the part when we will use the parameters, this can help us a lot, especially when we use other textures that have more and bigger details.


Here's what it looks like in this case with no parameters only and settings 0.06


It's time to start designing to add trees and make a beautiful landscape

For this, I will recommend some great assets like temperate Vegetation: Spruce Forest
you can download it here Marketplace


Here we will not go into details how to design a sum I leave it to your imagination, feel free to do it as you wish!

My result will look something like this I use a combination of all 3 assets with big small and medium meshes

This part should actually be very simple, just add the asset you downloaded to your project!

My Results

Very quickly, we got to the part where we already have to make sphere that will serve as the Milky Way
First we need to download some textures if you can't find i recommended on the solarsystemscope site.

In the content browser let's create a new folder let's call it stars and let's create a new material called MilkyWay inside we need our texture downloaded from the link above to be available

Open our material and let's connect it in the following way



Now we want to make a sphere simply in the menu select edit > plugins

Look for the modeling tools editor mode and click enable


Open the modeling tool and create a new sphere with the following settings

Radius 288
Latitude 100
Longitude 100

Depending on how big your landscape is, enlarging your sphere I will use 3x 1000 for this tutorial.




Let's add the texture of our milkyway we just made to our sphere, but now we
have to animate it to rotate.

What we will need  for our texture to rotate it and be like a small animation is Panner 
To do this, we will add one simple panner and adjust it to 0.006


Now our texture will move, and it looks like the flow of time
which is very impressive of course adjust the size and gloss of the Milky Way in the parameter and the speeds in Panner.

Now we will improve it a bit by using light and effects.



What will we actually use to make our design more beautiful and adaptable?

It will not actually be difficult, we will not use lights as professionals nor advanced effects but very simply

We need 3 options here and they are

ExponentialHeightFog
Light Source
SkyLight little bit.

I suggest you play and do something you want besides that you will learn the most but in case you want to adjust my final work they are here for all 3 options.





 







That would be it for this tutorial, if you have questions feel free to ask this is the final result.