Looking better :D did you make a whitebox first or are you just making it as you make the meshes? Here is that small tip. Its not that special but it helps for some things where a soft blended vertex mask fails. :) Ignore my terrible tiling textures. lol
Teacher only requested minor changes, so it's full steam ahead into 3d! Thanks for the suggestions and kind words guys, really adds to the motivation. Going to get some some more of the sky color in the sand and try for some really far out heavy blue flora here and there, we'll play it by ear. Started the first pass on the…