Breakdown: Calm Lake That Looks Like Oil Painting

Introduction 

Hi, my name is Etienne, I’m 32 years old, and – believe it or not – I work full-time as a corporate client advisor at a bank. Not exactly the career path you'd expect for a 3D artist, right?

My journey into digital art began somewhere between five and ten years ago when I got into photography and videography. I wasn’t just interested in capturing moments – I wanted to create my own worlds, to shape reality as I saw it. But at some point, I hit a wall. Photography and video could only take me so far. I wanted total creative control.

That’s when I stumbled across Blender. Like many, I started with the infamous donut tutorial, and from there, I got hooked. I experimented with concept art for a while before eventually gravitating toward natural environments, where I found my true passion.

My biggest influences along the way? Maarten Nauta, Sam Kruger, Covingsworth, and Aaron Westwood, all incredible artists whose work inspired me to push my skills further (Aaron Westwood deserves a special mention since I tried to recreate almost every single one of his images). Like most self-taught artists, I built my knowledge through YouTube tutorials, paid online courses (not a suggestion), blog posts, and an endless amount of trial and error. If I were to start over today, I’d probably do some things differently – but at the end of the day, the path doesn’t matter. The goal does. 

I’ve now been involved in 3D art for about three years, primarily as a hobby. I haven’t worked on any high-profile projects, but that’s mainly because I never really chased those opportunities. That said, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with some amazing partners like World Creator, Maxtree, and GeoScatter, and I’ve taken on smaller projects for indie games and short films.

But what I value the most is the community I’ve found along the way. Over time, I’ve connected with incredibly talented artists who share my passion. We exchange ideas daily, challenge each other, and constantly push each other to improve. The friendships and motivation I’ve gained from this have been just as valuable as any technical skill I’ve learned.

Calm Lake

I’m always on the lookout for inspiration. I regularly browse sites like Freepik, Adobe Stock, Pinterest, ArtStation, and Google to collect ideas. At some point, I stumbled upon a particular photograph by Dmitry Alekseev, and it immediately grabbed my attention. The atmosphere, the landscape – it just had that perfect balance of serenity and realism. That’s when I knew: I had to recreate it.

For me, every project has the same underlying goal – to depict reality as convincingly as possible. It’s never about replicating a photo pixel for pixel but about capturing its essence, its mood, and its subtle imperfections that make it feel alive.

This project was also an opportunity to refine my lighting, atmosphere, and vegetation workflow. I wanted to push myself further in achieving a convincing, natural-looking environment with all the organic randomness that nature has.

Composition & Modeling

Luckily, the composition wasn’t something I had to struggle with in this project – the reference image already had a strong, natural layout.

Composition is an area I find quite challenging. There are countless rules about balance, leading lines, focal points, and so on, but I tend to rely on instinct. When I create original artworks from scratch, I don’t overthink composition – I just go with what feels right.

For this project, I followed my usual workflow:

1. Landscape first. The base terrain is always my starting point. Using the reference image as a guide, I sculpted the land in Blender out of a plane, making sure to match the general shape and elevation. 

2. Scale and proportions. One of the biggest challenges was ensuring that the elements – trees, the lake, the surrounding landscape – all felt properly scaled relative to each other. To achieve this, I placed basic reference objects (simple cubes) in the scene to simulate trees and other large elements before diving into finer details.

3. Blocking out key elements. Once I had a rough shape, I added essential landmarks – major trees and the fallen log – to define the composition.  

4. Vegetation and detailing. The final step was scattering smaller details like grass, bushes, and tiny environmental elements that enhance realism.

One time-saving trick I often use is setting up a clear hierarchy in my scene:

• High-detail assets only where they are needed (close to the camera).
• Low-poly or simplified assets in the background to save resources.
• Weight maps to control grass and tree distribution instead of placing everything manually.

By focusing on efficiency, I can spend more time on the important details – things that actually contribute to realism – rather than overloading my scene with unnecessary complexity.

Asset Selection & Optimization

For this project, I used a large number of resources. Over the past three years, I’ve built a massive asset library (honestly, it’s probably too big at this point). Having this library allowed me to find and integrate elements that matched the look and feel of the reference image.

I mainly used:

• Maxtree (trees, grass, bushes)
• Forestation (trees)
• Quixel Megascans (debris, branches, logs)
• Botaniq (water debris)
• SpeedTree (additional trees)

However, just throwing in high-quality assets isn’t enough – they need to blend together seamlessly. To harmonize the colors and textures, I made several shader optimizations, adjusting the materials so that no single asset stood out unnaturally. Color correction, roughness tweaks, and subtle blending in the shader editor helped make everything feel like part of the same environment.

Texturing

Surprisingly, I barely textured anything in this scene except for the water and the ground. The reason? Most of the ground is covered in grass, so I didn’t need to spend much time on fine details that would never be visible. A simple Smart UV Project was enough to get the job done.

For the water, I kept things minimal yet effective. A Noise Texture combined with a Bump Node created gentle waves, while another Noise Texture, without bump mapping, added subtle surface irregularities. This was important because water surfaces aren’t uniformly covered in waves – there are always areas of stillness that add to the realism.

In the end, my goal was efficiency. I wanted the scene to look natural without getting lost in unnecessary complexity. 

Scattering

The scattering process was, without a doubt, the most challenging and time-consuming part of this project. Nature is chaotic, yet it follows certain rules, and recreating that balance is tricky.

I started by placing key trees manually to define the overall composition and ensure the scene felt natural. My main reference was a real-world landscape, so I had to study the way trees clustered together, how gaps formed naturally, and where specific types of vegetation thrived.

For the forest, I selected 2–3 variations of each species and scattered them on weight maps. I used three different scatter systems:

• Fir trees for the primary forest mass,
• Birch trees to break up the monotony and add variety,
• Smaller fir trees to fill gaps and create a more natural, layered look.

Then came the grass, one of the trickiest elements to get right. I divided it into two separate systems:

1. Close-up grass, detailed and rich for the areas near the camera.
2. Distant grass, optimized for performance to avoid unnecessary rendering time.

Using weight masks, I controlled the grass distribution, ensuring that not every part of the scene was covered. This not only added realism – since natural landscapes always have areas with less growth – but also significantly reduced render times.

Initially, I wasn’t satisfied with my results. The first iterations felt artificial, so I experimented with different tree species, grass variations, and even small bushes. Finding the right balance between detail and realism required multiple revisions, but eventually, I reached a version that felt right.

Lighting

Lighting can make or break an image, so I spent a good amount of time refining it. I chose my lighting setup early on, as it significantly influenced the look and feel of the scene.

Since my reference image had an overcast atmosphere, I experimented with various HDRIs to find the best match. I almost exclusively rely on HDRIs for lighting because, in my experience, they produce the most realistic results. Occasionally, I use Blender’s default lighting setup (a sun and a basic sky), but it requires a lot of manual tweaking to achieve a natural look, which can be time-consuming.

To enhance the sense of depth and atmosphere, I added a subtle volume scatter effect inside a cube. However, I kept this effect minimal, as I wanted to refine the atmospheric depth in post-production. Blender’s Mist Pass was instrumental in achieving that soft, natural fading in the distance.

Once I was happy with the raw render, I did some final touch-ups in Photoshop. The adjustments were minimal but effective – slight tweaks to brightness, contrast, and white balance to fine-tune the overall look. Post-processing is like seasoning a dish: you don’t want to overdo it, just enough to bring out the best in the final image.

Conclusion 

This project had an unusual timeline. I originally started working on it a few months ago, but I wasn’t satisfied with the results. 

Instead of forcing it, I set it aside. Months later, I stumbled upon the scene again, took a fresh look at it, and decided to give it another go. This time, I approached it differently – refining the forest, tweaking the grass, and adjusting the lighting. That’s when everything started to come together.

The biggest challenges? As always:

1. Achieving realistic vegetation – grass, bushes, and trees must feel organic, not artificial.
2. Mastering realistic lighting/colors, and atmospheric depth – lighting and fog had to work together to create a convincing sense of scale.

Even now, I don’t feel that I’ve perfected these elements. But that’s part of the process – every project is a learning experience.

My advice to beginners:

• Step away when you’re stuck. If a project isn’t working, put it on hold. When you return with fresh eyes, you’ll see new possibilities.
• Know when to finish. It’s easy to get caught in endless tweaking. But an "imperfect" finished project is always better than an abandoned one.
• Experiment. Don’t get stuck in one workflow – try new lighting setups, materials, or rendering techniques.
• Seek feedback. Other artists will often notice things you don’t. Join communities, share your work, and stay open to critique.
• Enjoy the process. It’s tempting to focus on the final result, but real growth happens in the journey of creating. Be proud of yourself and what you have done.

At the end of the day, every project – whether successful or not – adds to your experience. The key is to keep creating, learning, and refining your skills.

Etienne M., 3D Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine