Progress of Rock pop
What made me get enthused about starting this project was this thread posted by dandelO titled 'Did you know' on August 28, 2011:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=13069.0 wherein one may be able to use a 'Mesh Displacer' to effect RTO with real mesh displacement and bump mapping for shading of Rock objects while making populations. It is explained further in the thread that there may be some issues with this method; but, so far, I haven't encountered any. One limitation here is attaining unique geometric variations of the Rock object while populating as you would when using the Fake stones shader; but, for me, I find that just widening the Rock size range from minimum to maximum delivers what appears to be adequate for shape variations.
I got an idea of using the internal shaders of FrankB's 'Hero Rock' from the NWDA site:
http://www.nwdanet.com/buy/7-preset-packs/24-fake-stone-and-hero-rock-pack-v2 where one has two image maps for color/texture; or, for those of who want to use their own image maps, you'll be able to come up with unlimited Rock object variations. Additionally, the internal shaders network include two surface shaders and a reflective shader.
You will need to have this preset pack from NWDA to try this.At this point, I added another possible variation into the mix achieving color variation for Rock object populations. Thanks to dandelO for coming up with a nice solution: A Rock object with a Mesh Displacer containing a network of four internal nodes connected to the surface shaders; namely, Surface layer-Red, Surface layer Blue which are connected to a Transform shader (World space checked) and a Power fractal shader. Of course, you will want to change the red and blue surface shaders to come up with some earth colors for the Rock object population. What I did was make a clip file of these internals and applied them to the internals of FrankB's Hero Rock. The connection is as follows: From the Merge shader contained in FrankB's image map group create another Merge shader. Then, connect the clip file of dandelO's internals to that Merge shader's 'Shader A' input. Connect the Merge shader's output to FrankB's 'Hero Surface' shader node's color function input. You can additionally connect the Merge shader's output to FrankB's 'Moss Undersides' color function input for a different effect.
You can use dandelO's file alone in lieu of what I explained above and will get some marvelous results (
Martin, maybe you can post your file here).
As you can see, a lot of experimenting can be done here for different population effects.
Many thanks to dandelO and Oshyan for their advice and suggestions here and to FrankB for coming up with the Fake Stones and Hero Rock Pack. Also, thanks to Ryan Archer's 'Dirt and Soil Pack' which I used for the base surface in the image. This is available at the NWDA site:
http://www.nwdanet.com/buy/7-preset-packs/29-dirt-and-soil-pack-by-rarcher
