Asset: Scanned Ground Elements
🕑 Added 2021-09-02 00:37:30 +0000 UTC
I've been LOVING these- easiest way to see a scene come together before your eyes. I have a few other packs I'll be uploading in the next week or so (old wooden stuff, cement structures), but this is the first. I put a bunch of work into normalizing them all so they all have flat edges and should blend into each other really naturally.
It's also the first time I've ever been able to easily create a natural ground surface. I've tried displacement maps and projections and stuff, and really high-res scans, but these are the first ones that have enough detail to get the job done without bogging down my system.
I have two versions- full and optimized. I highly recommend full. These aren't huge assets by any means, but they're a lot higher poly than usual (lots of little rocks and such). My personal recommendation is pick the assets you need from the full version and append them into your project- but I also have the optimized versions where I shrank the textures and reduced the geometry as much as I could without stuff falling apart.
As I mention in the video, duplicate these things with Alt+D instead of Shift+D, and you can have WAY more instances in your scene without bogging down your machine! :D
RIGHT CLICK, SAVE LINK,
Full Version Blend File
Optimized Version Blend File
Optimized FBX (as always, without any material settings like bump/specular/whatnot)
Anyways! I hope you have a fraction as much fun with these things as I cam.
Also, I've already mentioned it a bunch of places, but these were all snagged with the PolycamAI app (still just for iphones but they say that'll change soon)- really darn good results with just a phone.
I did a bunch of cleanup work on these guys to get them to play nice- I'll make a tutorial getting into some of that in the near future here!


Comments
thanks ian ua the best
Benja Min
I cant begin to tell you how much you are helping me. Can I ask you to one day do a tutorial on how to edit HDRIs. I would love to make that eternal sky image but I dont know how.
I Like it Hardcore Tv
wow how did I miss this,... thanks again Ian, really been utilizing all your info to work on VFX projects so learning this and learning how to 3d scan, model, texture, composite, do lighting, fillm, and edit...etc... is a task in itself, but things like this are a time saver...definitely appreciate you sharing your work.
These are amazing, thank you! I made a short little scene with them and really appreciated how seamlessly they flowed together. https://youtu.be/htfpVyOHeBw
This really opened my eyes to using this stuff a different way. I’m still new at blender and I find myself following the rules strictly ie (make a landscape with subdivided surf/sculpt out). Thank you for showing me how to break the rules
It's amazing, I knew that I didn't need to learn English. And now Russian google has launched a voice-over translation of videos on YouTube and Vimeo. now I just turn on the video and watch. I don't pause every minute to read subtitles. Hi, buddy, I'm very happy to look at you.
Phil South
Oh on the harsh self shadowing thing? It didn’t help that my initial experiments were a) small objects I scanned and scaled up huge and b) processed them at the default medium res. Some of the weird straight shadows were polygon triangles. I’m reprocessing at high res now to see if that makes a difference. I’m turning a small 70s cake decoration into a giant statue. With a mission like that I guess I can expect challenges :)
Phil South
On that note, has anyone else noticed that 3D scans self shadow very harshly. I don't know why. They recieve soft shadows but self shadows are almost always hard edged and nasty, in my limited experience.
Mark Phillips
Thank you Ian for this knowledge bomb. Any tips on a good Android Photogrammetry app?
Phil South
Polycam works with my crappy iPhone 6S but obviously the Lidar mode is greyed out. Photo mode is some of the dang best photogrammetry I’ve ever seen so can’t say I’m missing it yet :)
Luc Kleuskens
thanks for the assets :) great stuff. I noticed 2 of the assets have the normals flipped :)
Ian Hubert
An thanks! And I feel the same- Oleg's packs are absolutely fantastic (and of such cool biomes), but I can only have a few in my scene before stuff starts to get bogged down, so I always have to check which ones are which ahead of time. And oooo- half of the water was based off of some of Nathan Vegdahl's experiments, and then I went in and made a big old mess to have it work with my scene; I'll see if maybe we can work together to make a nicer/tweakable one-size-fits-all type option (the hardest part is getting the eevee and cycles results to match, given that there are reflections/refractions/volumetrics/shadows and all that- but it's definitely doable!)
Ian Hubert
Cool!! I'll see if I can put that together this week! It's a mix of proportional editing and booleans and texture painting (ALTHOUGH! Nathan Vegdahl and I are doing a wacky experiment tomorrow to see if we can use a custom HDRI to neutralize the lighting of our scans?? He understands the math better than me :P I'm crazy curious to see how it goes).
Ian Hubert
I've got an iphone 12, although apparently the app works with any iphone at this point, which is nice- I'll put a video about scanning/cleaning the scans together real quick here! :D
Jonathan King
Been using the app quite a bit – but would LOVE to see what you're doing to clean them up.
Hey Ian, what version of iPhone are you using? Agree with @alex yony that a polycam tutorial would be nice.
Make sure you got decent source of light - the stronger the light, the more it pumps up the volumetric. For eevee, small light sources don't give great results imo - but that's where sun lamps really shine (and that's what Ian does)
Phil South
Yeah what’s up with volumetrics? I can’t seem to get anything other than “can’t see anything” and “is there mist in this shot, I can’t see any”. I’ve followed a ton of tutorials and not one of them uses the same workflow. I had pretty much written it off as an idea then you drop these gorgeously wispy volumetrics. What the fudge. :) maybe it’s all there I just got to find out what I’m doing to kill my fog.
Austin
yes!! please
alex
A tutorial on polycam would be so dope
i have an Iphone 10..I splurged to get the new one, just for the LIDAR capabilities...after using it extensively, feeling somewhat disappointed with its results...that's until I discovered (thanks to Ian) Polycam. It's $40 a month, but well worth it..and it gives you both LIDAR and regular photoscan options.. TBH, the ease of use and the results, blows RealityCapture out of the water...(in my humble opinion.) You definitely dont have quite as much control, (200 pic limit) but so far.. havent needed it. Until LIDAR can get the finer detail..it's back to photoscans.
best $7 ive ever spent. between the assets and the wealth of knowledge from a true Artist..(capital A)... I tip my hat to ya!
it's that guy!
thanks mr huberto. these are actually so much fun to play with. I hope you release more!
Yeah I'd love to see that.
Nubble Butt
Agreed! I've never been able to make an ocean that looks that good!
Nubble Butt
TIL about alt-d...thank you so much!
Max Chandler
Marvelous. I am so eager to get started using these wonderful scans. BTW you are right about how vital alt+D is for us with wimpy computers.
MrLinvalT
I think i'm gonna get an iphone lol this app looks so darn good or maybe imma stick with my dslr
YOOOO this is sick
Olivier Netter
Yeah, ocean stuffs by The Prawns, sounds good. Thank you so much.
Olivier Netter
Droids appreciate !
Thank you so much! Working on a pretty big movie project with my Primary school students at present (so far 1 year in the making!) This is going to up the realism of a LOT of our scenes. BRILLIANT! +1 for the eevee volumetrics (water) tut.
Hey Ian this video was wonderful and the assets are great . We would love to see how you made the ocean look so good in eevee .thank you so much
Hey Ian! Thanks for more great content :D I had this idea popping out these last days - as now most of your community will get more into photoscan / polycam Ai - HOW COOL would it be to create a website / catalog where all of your patrons can upload their own photoscans, and organize them by country / type / biome? We could have scans and bits of environment from all over the planet, and I think that would be so amazing! With few standards and rules, and since we all follow your workflow, it would match your approach/style and it could even help you to get environments you wouldn't find where you live! What do you people think?
Mike Hay
Very cool! Thanks Ian!
Dear Ian, great work. Would be very interesting to see your workflow of scanning an specialy optimizing the scans. How do you clean them up? What is your process to making them blend correctly an so on?
Mike L. Taylor
These are awesome. I’ve been using Oleg’s rad ground packs and they are super great but very heavy and not as easy to blend the edges. Also… when do we get see that volumetric water set up from the last post?
He's using the Photo mode - Lidar is cool and all, but much less accurate and can get quite messy most of the time. Photo mode is surprisingly extremely accurate, you can take super closeup shots to have finer details and so on!
Amazing! Thanks! 👍
George Moise
Dude. This is fucking amazing. You keep blowing all our minds. I watched you put together that quick scene with my mouth wide open. And I've been a patron for a long time now. The possibilities of your method are endless!! It's almost a little intimidating
Thanks Ian! This is very useful.
Zeke Faust
With Eevee you need to combine hdri images with additional lighting, because it cant really use the HDR values as a lighting source. With cycles you can just use the straight up hdri. For free, hdri haven has good images. And for paid, textures.com has good HDRI options
Zeke Faust
The haircut looks good! Oh, and the scans too
Maaaaaaan seeing how quickly you can bash something together in Blender with these assets is just awesome. I live near a stupidly long walking trail (~700 miles) which goes past all sorts of terrain & this has inspired me to start scanning parts of it.... and get fit! cheers
Tommy Shades
these are amazing ! can you walk us through the scene setup here ? is the environment just a HDRI ? how do you get it to look so realistic
omg thank you!
Aaron Gutierrez
Ahh! Thank you for this post Ian really awesome:) The instancing tip sounds great
Jostein Lie Svalheim
These detail-packs are my favourite packs. Groundbreaking stuff! You rock! Not taking these for granite. Probably your best pebble-cation so fa... aight I'll stop
Absolutely mad
epic
Those are totally beautiful
Fes
Oh these are amazing! Are you shooting these on an iPhone 12 or 12 Pro so you can access to the lidar for Polycam?