New in The Shop Art Rocks By Upon Infinity

[DannyG]

New in the shop:
Art Rocks by Planetside's Upon Infinity
http://www.store.nwdastore.com/objects/art-rocks-by-upon-infinity, 20+ Rocks & Rock Structures. Use them as is or tweak them up to your hearts desire with TG's mesh displacement and Power Fractals. Varying map configurations gives this pack pack serious bang for the buck. (obj & tgo Format)

http://www.store.nwdastore.com/objects/art-rocks-by-upon-infinity

[Upon Infinity]

Here's a quick breakdown of what everyone can expect to receive:

- 20 rock models + their derivatives
      - derivative of the doughnut concretion (top in picture) is complete concretion w/o hole in middle (not shown)
      - derivative of the grassy rock group, grass hero, included (not shown)
- Avg poly count per object between 80-120 thousand polys
      - except the grassy rock group (top right in picture) which is 80-120 per indiv rock in object
      - except the large arch which is over 1 million polys total
- Avg texture size is 4K per object for colour and disp maps each (some of the better models @ 5K)
      - grassy rock group has 4 indiv uv sets @ 4K avg
      - large arch has 5 indiv uv sets @ 4K avg
- Multiple texture schemes for many of the rock objects
      - typical alternate textures include desert & grassy textures for use of base model in multiple environments
      - large arch (top left) has 2 total schemes (standard shown, grassy rock alternate)
      - mini arch (far right) has 2 total schemes (desert shown, rocky alternate)
      - wall rock (centre-left triangular) 4 total texture schemes (standard shown, grassy rock / rocky / mossy alternate)
      - rough rock (front centre) has 6 total texture schemes (cracked shown, grassy rock / sharp / desert / mossy / standard alternate
- rendered preview of each object in its respective folders
- ready to use .tgo's already setup (just import, scale and rotate) for every object

Ultimately, I think this is a great value compared to many of the rock packs I've seen on other sites (some packs go well into the many hundreds of $ for a few objects) and enough variety for use in any scene.  Any further questions, I'll be happy to answer.

[Upon Infinity]

Just a few of the alternate textures along with the grassy hero, which ended up as one of my favourites.

[TheBadger]

Interesting. I had been watching the threads of this topic develop. Will be looking to see some real renders that use these.

One thing that interests me on this topic is how one could stack objets such as these rocks, in TG, to form much larger shapes of rock. I saw a workflow for Unity, where the user made a few rocks, and then made a canyon and a cave from them just by placing the stone objects next to, and on top of one another. It was quite eye opening. The result was really nice. And his rocks were not better than yours. But Unity allows users to navigate in 3D as well as move objects much much better than TG. Still, if someone had the energy to try, some good results could come with these stones.

here is an image that shows the idea: http://blogs.unity3d.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/1d00b968-ae9c-4f7d-aec7-6f20d9966a3e_scaled.jpg
the image is not from the video I mentioned, but shows the basic idea.

here is another image that better shows the result: http://media.moddb.com/images/articles/1/119/118224/cave_tutorial.jpg

You can see from the images that the forms are made up of just 2-3 rocks. And in the tut I saw for unity that is indeed all that was done to make really complex forms; just stacking 1-3 objects like OP objects.

[Upon Infinity]

I agree, they're not better than mine. 

Still, the technique is interesting.  I think you first have to have stacking in mind when designing the rocks, however, which mine did not take into consideration and to have a few very generic rocks that kind of interlock a bit with only a bit of scaling.

I have to be honest, though, I don't care for that cave at all.  I think, for Terragen, you'd be better off using displaceables, or a displacement map to get a basic cliff / cave entrance, and then import some sculpted rocks to pretty up the entrance, and maybe try stacking with those.  But seeing those rasterized textures fail at that scale reminds me of the N64 era.

Of course, I could always model a cave entrance and release that...    However, then you lose the ability to custom build it.  As with anything, it seems, it always come down to substituting one benefit versus one drawback for another.

[Oshyan]

You could easily take the same approach in TG if you want to try to build canyons or caves out of such models. Import your models, make sure you're in Textured 3D preview mode, then select each model in turn and use the Move gizmo. The model position will update in realtime, in most cases (unless you have millions of polys on screen). Pretty simple.

- Oshyan