Photosynthetic Utopia - 3d Render

Artwork submission for Blender's April 2026 community contest, using the chosen "Solarpunk" theme, this is meant to take the "Solar" in Solarpunk quite literally, as one tiny civilization living at the tip of the branch of the world tree, getting all their energy and world resources from the energy it provides with photosynthesis, and with that, having all their needs met while also being in tune with their provider and coexisting peacefully.

A few of the highlights for the projects definitively has to be the procedural shader material I developed for the terrain, I have it setup so one slider has the master control to drive the time of generation, constantly generating different continents slowly over time. As well as the water shader which originally was meant to be fully transparent, but ended up utilizing a method to generate the waves which involved taking one of the terrain layers and running it through an ambient occlusion node to get the high and low spots for the water, which while it slowed down things a bit generated some perfect wave foam that generated procedurally.