Free Download: Namaqualand - A Rocky South African Desert, Blooming With Wildflowers And Succulents
· BlenderNationThe Poly Haven team traveled to the arid desert near the West coast of South Africa to 3D scan the arid desert. They now released these assets under a CC0 license called "Namaqualand".
The project required a 12-hour drive from Joburg and was carried out in Goegap Nature Reserve, with the team camping in lodgings that had a small solar system for power.
The team used various equipment for scanning, including a black velvet backdrop, turntable, cross-polarized ring flash, Elinchrom ELB 500 rig, and a motorized single-axis gantry.
Scanning plants with photogrammetry was challenging, so the team also captured photometric stereo scans from plant debris.
Most plant assets were created dynamically with Blender’s geometry nodes, using a combination of various scan data, references, and many months of hard work.
Make sure you read the blog post about this project!