Gaea Essentials: Create Realistic Procedural Environments

Procedurally generated terrains that can be art-directed — or even combined with real-world satellite data — are an important cornerstone of CG production. Gaea is an exciting new tool for developing photorealistic environments and has been quickly adopted by the industry. In this 4.5-hour workshop, Dax Pandhi, creator of Gaea and Co-Founder of QuadSpinner, provides a thorough look at all the essentials you need to know to create realistic, high-definition terrains using a procedural methodology. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a 3D hobbyist, this workshop will help you get up to speed quickly in terrain-generation techniques being used in the real world.

In this comprehensive crash course for Gaea, Dax shares techniques that have been used on high-budget productions to create a multitude of photorealistic environments, including an overview of how to use real-world satellite data and Dax’s personal techniques for “bulking up” and eroding terrains for naturalistic results. As the workshop progresses, you’ll learn how to create even more sophisticated terrains for very high-quality and photorealistic results that follow the laws of nature.

Dax shares a variety of texture setups — all driven procedurally using the Texture and Satmaps nodes to give you complex color maps to colorize your terrains. As well as demonstrating standard Mountain and Erosion nodes, you’ll also see how other nodes including Anastomosis, Snowfall, Canyonizer, Fold, RockMap, Stacks, Shear, Carver, Surface, and Shatter can be utilized to achieve very specific looks and terrain shapes — particularly helpful when exploring look-dev options.

Gaea project files are included with this workshop.