--- title: How to Make Fantasy Garden of Dragons Scene with... description: Rebecca Ma breaks down her 16-week Think Tank Training Centre project recreating Dao Vi's 'Garden of Dragons' concept art in 3D. She sculpted dragons in... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-make-fantasy-garden-of-dragons-scene-with-procedural-textures-uyyyviwnb twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: How to Make Fantasy Garden of Dragons Scene with Procedural Textures | daily.dev og:description: Rebecca Ma breaks down her 16-week Think Tank Training Centre project recreating Dao Vi's 'Garden of Dragons' concept art in 3D. She sculpted dragons in... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-make-fantasy-garden-of-dragons-scene-with-procedural-textures-uyyyviwnb og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/uyyyVIWNB.png og:image:alt: How to Make Fantasy Garden of Dragons Scene with Procedural Textures og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How to Make Fantasy Garden of Dragons Scene with Procedural Textures **[80 LEVEL](https://daily.dev/sources/80lv)** · 13 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Rebecca Ma breaks down her 16-week Think Tank Training Centre project recreating Dao Vi's 'Garden of Dragons' concept art in 3D. She sculpted dragons in ZBrush, using the Make 3D tool to convert Photoshop patterns into geometry, and textured nearly all assets procedurally without UVs using triplanar projections in Maya and V-Ray. Dragon materials layered corroded metal, copper-toned rock, rust and moss using V-Ray Bercon Noise, Dirt and Falloff nodes. She simulated water and whitewater in Houdini with a FLIP workflow and built atmospheric fog from Cloud Shape Generate and VDBs, then composited everything in Nuke with deep EXR passes and cryptomattes. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How can I texture a complex ZBrush sculpt without unwrapping UVs? Use triplanar projections with a procedural texturing workflow in Maya and V-Ray, layering multiple materials with procedural masks instead of relying on UV coordinates. This avoids remeshing sculpts to preserve detail and skips the time-consuming unwrapping of complex meshes like terrain and dragons, with retopology focused only on reducing polygon counts. _Developers building similar 3D pipelines can find more procedural workflow breakdowns on daily.dev._ ### Why doesn't a V-Ray Dirt node mask affect displacement on a water surface? V-Ray evaluates displacement before the Dirt node in that setup, so an occlusion mask built from Dirt cannot influence displacement near riverbanks as intended. The workaround is switching to a hand-painted mask instead, which gives direct control over the transition between calmer central water and more varied water near the shores. _Anyone debugging render pipeline quirks like node evaluation order can track similar fixes on daily.dev._ ### What Houdini nodes are used to simulate a waterfall and whitewater effect? A FLIP workflow handles the waterfall: a fluid source and FLIP tank run through a FLIP Solver, using collision geometry to shape the flow, then the Fluid Compress and Particle Fluid Surface nodes convert particles into polygon geometry. Whitewater is generated separately with the Whitewater Source and Whitewater Solver nodes, then converted to polygons before exporting as Alembic caches. _Artists piecing together Houdini FLIP simulation workflows can follow related breakdowns on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Stunning Garden of Dragons Scene With Fog & Fluid Simulations](https://daily.dev/posts/stunning-garden-of-dragons-scene-with-fog-fluid-simulations-h8sbw94c8) · 80 LEVEL · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Recreating a 2D Environment in 3D Using ZBrush and Substance 3D](https://daily.dev/posts/recreating-a-2d-environment-in-3d-using-zbrush-and-substance-3d-vcd0l5zcm) · 80 LEVEL · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Shaping Fantasy House on Cliff Environment in 3D](https://daily.dev/posts/shaping-fantasy-house-on-cliff-environment-in-3d-4vxzneywk) · 80 LEVEL · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [How to Create Gentle Girl Surrounded by Flowers in 3D](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-create-gentle-girl-surrounded-by-flowers-in-3d-qco2iyvan) · 80 LEVEL · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Designing a Diorama of a Realistic Rusty Gate Using ZBrush & UE5](https://daily.dev/posts/designing-a-diorama-of-a-realistic-rusty-gate-using-zbrush-ue5-dh0lzzgnm) · 80 LEVEL · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#game-design](https://daily.dev/tags/game-design) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-make-fantasy-garden-of-dragons-scene-with-procedural-textures-uyyyviwnb) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"How to Make Fantasy Garden of Dragons Scene with Procedural Textures","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-make-fantasy-garden-of-dragons-scene-with-procedural-textures-uyyyviwnb","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-make-fantasy-garden-of-dragons-scene-with-procedural-textures-uyyyviwnb"},"datePublished":"2026-10-28T09:18:15.041Z","dateModified":"2026-10-28T09:18:44.353Z","description":"Rebecca Ma breaks down her 16-week Think Tank Training Centre project recreating Dao Vi's 'Garden of Dragons' concept art in 3D. 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