Verdant Dawn

"Verdant Dawn" is a peaceful forest environment created using Geometry Nodes in Blender. The render portrays a forest split by a pathway, illuminated by the warm glow of a setting sun.

Behind The Process

Using Blender’s Weight Paint and Geometry Nodes systems, I positioned and scattered trees, grass, plants, rocks, and debris across the landscape, with a cat statue subtly placed to add a touch of story. Assets, materials, and an HDRI were sourced from Polyhaven and Fab, while the cat statue came from BlenderKit. The trees were created using Blender’s Sapling Tree Gen add-on.

Each asset within the Geometry Nodes system was adjusted with variation in scale, rotation, and mesh. For lighting, I used a forest HDRI, sunlight, and volumetrics to introduce a subtle fog. The scene was rendered in Cycles in 4K resolution at 750 samples.

I then imported the image into Lightroom for colour correction, focusing on enhancing exposure, contrast, and shadows while fine-tuning the orange and yellow tones. To soften the sharpness of the grass and leaves, I reduced the texture and clarity before bringing the image into Photoshop, where I applied a Tilt-Shift blur.