Duck Pond
This project was started to test out Blenders Brushstroke Tools addon, which lets me scatter and draw brushstrokes on a 3D surface. Since the first result was very promising, I decided to build a scene around it that fit the stylized look.
Through that I also learned a lot about building stylized shaders and materials for the environment.
Since my initial plan was to test out the brushstroke toolset, I started by modeling and texture painting a very rough duck shape from reference. It didn't have to be very accurate, because the brushstrokes would later cover up the object and adopt the underlaying color.
I then added the first layer of brushstrokes to the model. The strokes were distributed automatically, with only basic directional inputs from me:
I drew the rest of the brushstrokes by hand to represent the wings of the duck:
This first result looked promising to me, so I decided the duck should have a pond with water lilies to swim in.
For that I built a shader and several Geometry Nodes setups for the pond and the lilies.
First the GeoNodes for the water lilies:
The system distributes a first layer of lily pads. Then, a second one is placed on top and shifted upwards, where a pad from the first layer already exists.
That way there is little to no intersection between the layers.
With the same procedure, the lilies are then placed on top.
The whole setup is based on a vertex mask that can be easily edited.
After that, I built the shader for the pond:
It relies on stylization by basically splitting up the colors, shadows and highlights into editable layers.
This gives me a great control over the individual colors and visibilities (e. g. of the reflections) and the overall composition of the pond.
I also added some foam around the water lilies and the duck.
The proximity information for the foam gets collected by a corresponding Geometry Nodes setup.
I also included a way to simulate foam behind the duck when it's moving (as seen in the simulation area), but never ended up animating the scene.
To compliment the painterly look of the duck and the pond I handpainted the base color and the normal of the lily pads (and of the duck's beak).
That way the light interacts with the color in a painterly style.
The last step was to decorate the scene with weeping willows, mainly responsible for shaping the light falling on the pond:
