Render tilt shift and other stuff i made

i recently got into a tilt-shift/miniature effect photography rabbit hole and decided to do something similar with wynncraft. will occasionally post updates, images in spoilers

not sure if this goes under art or render because its technically both.

Spoiler: miniature detlas v1 (no players yet)

this is an early wip and kind of proof-of-concept, i'm working on making the defocus effect more like real tilt-shift photographs and slowly adding life to the scene. (players, random mobs, etc.)

Spoiler: mini detlas v2

changed the angle a bit and fixed the blur filter (it's still a little aggressive on the background but thats ok)
starting to add entities. will continue tomorrow

all images created with blender using cycles rendering engine.
many thanks to this blender stackexchange thread for the initial node setup i based my blur filter on.

 

behind the scenes (not detlas this time)
i start with a normal render of the scene, and using a gradient shader and a conveniently placed cube generate a z-filter.

Spoiler: normal render

Spoiler: z-filter

then i pass the image and filter through a defocus node (generates horrible artifacts btw)

Spoiler: what is even happening here

i pass another copy of the original render through a gaussian blur and blend as needed. usually i use the defocus for really far or really close areas because it looks better, and gaussian for less blurred areas because it has less weirdness.
finally i add some colour correction in post processing.

Spoiler: result

 

didnt want to make a new thread so im expanding this one to stuff i make in general
anyway, what do you think they get up to between missions?

 

There are official lobster models in 2.1

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why are all the animal models so fucking cute