Cobble Pattern

[Kadri]

Nice rocks René.

[Hetzen]

The second is very interesting. It almost looks like there are overhangs. Would that be possible?

Maybe. If I can get the mapping right. There's overlapping surfaces which tend to cause problems with shadows. So it's a bit hit and miss.

It's also some really extreme displacements. Some leniency on the verticals would help.

[Hetzen]

I'm starting to incline more and more towards the idea that in order to make good rocks/terrains you have to know the processes that have led to them looking as they do. Not to imitate the natural processes in any way, but to be able to analyze what you see exactly when looking at reference photos. Often there is so much going on that you can't see the forest from the trees.

Looks great. And yes, yes and yes.

It seems to me that you have to work down the scales. What is the land doing is the most interesting question. So how do you describe that.....

[Jo Kariboo]

Your rocks are as always excellent!

[René]

I'm starting to incline more and more towards the idea that in order to make good rocks/terrains you have to know the processes that have led to them looking as they do. Not to imitate the natural processes in any way, but to be able to analyze what you see exactly when looking at reference photos. Often there is so much going on that you can't see the forest from the trees.

Looks great. And yes, yes and yes.

It seems to me that you have to work down the scales. What is the land doing is the most interesting question. So how do you describe that.....

When I try to analyze pictures of rocks I mainly look at the shapes(of course) and try to separate them to see how they influence each other. What I often do and what really helps is to draw them, because then you look at them in a different way. First I draw the larger shapes and then work towards the details. But it remains mainly trial and error.

[WAS]

Curious question, Rene, how are you getting the noise to play nicely on X/Z and Y? I tried this and got an odd seperation line of equal height as the pattern between iterations.

[René]

I don't know. Moreover, I don't know blue nodes so I have to do strange and unusual things to get results, so it must be a matter of luck. I've messed around a bit with different nodes and turned them on and off to see what they do.
As soon as I have something that works properly I will post the TG file here because at this moment it's a mess(I can post it now If you don't mind struggling through a lot of clutter). Also the basic terrain I use is not yet optimal to get really good results. For now it is mainly a matter of finding a good camera viewpoint, and that can take a while. 

[René]

It may be because I feed the textures through a Transform Shader 'use world space enabled'.