Stones_v4

[Onyx]

Hi

Not a WIP, not a new picture... only a render of my latest stones lib I would like to show you...

[attachthumb=#]

[Henry Blewer]

These look quite real. I am most impressed by the flat slab of rock near the center. The pebbles look nice and the gravel egg size stones also fit well.
We would really like to see how you have done this. (We, as in the forum members, though 'we' are quite astonished!)

[dandelO]

Very cool, I love the lichen shaders. One thing kind of confusing(to my eyes) is the small shadow patches on the larger stones, at the right-hand side I can kind of see where they are coming from but at the left, there seem to be no protrusions that would cast those shadows, possibly just the angle of the light making it harder to see what is creating those shadows.
Not so keen on the smaller stones appearing to grow on some of the big ones but, all in all, I really like them. Cool!

[Onyx]

Thanks for comments

There are well some protusions which cause shadows on left and right big stones but I agree it is not easy to see with this light angle.

For smaller stones which appear to grow on big stones, I have also seen them, it is due to the ground below stones which is a non-flat terrain. Even with some compute terrain (I tried different patch sizes) I did not yet succeed to fully remove these artefacts. Maybe in v5.. 

Very cool, I love the lichen shaders. One thing kind of confusing(to my eyes) is the small shadow patches on the larger stones, at the right-hand side I can kind of see where they are coming from but at the left, there seem to be no protrusions that would cast those shadows, possibly just the angle of the light making it harder to see what is creating those shadows.
Not so keen on the smaller stones appearing to grow on some of the big ones but, all in all, I really like them. Cool!

[Walli]

very nice and good looking. My main point would be this - as I see water around there, I would think that the surface of the stones is more polished - now the stones look very rough. I would imagine, that at least the small bumps and dents would be washed out and so the overall appearance would be smoother.
But of course it also could be an area, where water doesn´t come that often!

[dandelO]

A nice tip I learned from FrankB a good time ago is to set each differing size of fake stone as the 2 inputs of a merge shader then, use the option 'highest raise'. This should eliminate the effect of small stones 'growing' on larger ones.

Large stones + Medium stones   Smaller stones + Smallest stones
             -Merge shader-                                 -Merge shader-
                                            -Merge shader-

If you set the network out like the above, kind of pyramid shaped, with 'highest raise' set in every merge shader, the problem will disappear. Use as many multiple merge shaders as you need over the full range of stone scales.

[Onyx]

@Dandelo: I used it of course.. nevertheless it works vey well only when ground below stones are almost flat. Now if ground is not flat (and created from some fractal displacements) you need to use some compute terrain shaders. The difficulty is then to adapt patch size to the merged stones shaders network.

@Walli: I used smooth option for stones under puddle only.

A nice tip I learned from FrankB a good time ago is to set each differing size of fake stone as the 2 inputs of a merge shader then, use the option 'highest raise'. This should eliminate the effect of small stones 'growing' on larger ones.

Large stones + Medium stones   Smaller stones + Smallest stones
             -Merge shader-                                 -Merge shader-
                                            -Merge shader-

If you set the network out like the above, kind of pyramid shaped, with 'highest raise' set in every merge shader, the problem will disappear. Use as many multiple merge shaders as you need over the full range of stone scales.

[choronr]

Rocks and stones with lichen growth are among the most interesting and come in a great number of varieties. What you have done here is very interesting.