Population of rock objects

[René]

Some innovative ideas and lovely results, certainly a big challenge!  I saw this today and thought of you. Don't know if using Substance Designer is an option you've considered, but there are some nice rock texturing examples out there.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/kxrDd

These displacements looks beautiful. I have not yet experimented with SD, but I intend to see what it can do for me. I am particularly curious to know whether an SD displacement will cause the same problems as procedural square noise in Terragen.

[bobbystahr]

That's what we need in TG, procedural!

Hear! Hear!

[bobbystahr]

Some innovative ideas and lovely results, certainly a big challenge!  I saw this today and thought of you. Don't know if using Substance Designer is an option you've considered, but there are some nice rock texturing examples out there.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/kxrDd

These displacements looks beautiful. I have not yet experimented with SD, but I intend to see what it can do for me. I am particularly curious to know whether an SD displacement will cause the same problems as procedural square noise in Terragen.

good question...

[René]

There are still some flaws here and there.

[Oshyan]

Unfortunately as far as I know Substance Designer only exports static raster texture data. It can be seamless/tileable, but there will be repetition without careful masking, blending, etc. and of course less potential detail than native procedurals.

- Oshyan

[Dune]

Procedural world position additions would help. And the ability to populate the displacable objects.

[mhaze]

This is a great solution for some kinds of outcrops but I can see two major issues. One, there is a lot of repetition in the textures and two,  it would be hard to use for more wide angle and general use such as a mountain range or large cliff feature.  There is still a need for procedural sharp edged square noise.

[zaxxon]

Substance Designer, not 'Surface Designer '... I understand the limitations applied directly into TG, but my thought was to use it on the Sculptris object then import into TG, not that I've tried such an approach.  Still, it would be very cool if there were some angular, square noise shader types native to TG.

[René]

Does anyone know an example where 3d noise has been successfully applied to a terrain? I searched for it but I couldn't find anything, at least no real square noise. Manhattan noise seems to come closest.

[mhaze]

I'd like to see clumped Square Noise like this, which, when layered would produce amazing effects.  It needs  to be soft edged rather like the soft voronoi noise we already have

[Hetzen]

Great work Rene! I think you might be on to something. I wonder if you could bake a top down render to use as a displacement map? Then add some of your previous Mars noise combinations?

I'd like to see clumped Square Noise like this, which, when layered would produce amazing effects.  It needs  to be soft edged rather like the soft voronoi noise we already have

You could probably combine a few different scaled squared noise functions to get that look. Have one larger scale, multiply two lower scaled/different seeded, then use an adjust colour to pull the white and blacks together. That would create clumping like your picture.

[Dune]

It's about time I shared a little secret of mine; try a repeated small image map of some squares/rectangles in different shapes/greys, and combine those. Works pretty nicely, though real sharp straight rocks are still an illusion.

[mhaze]

Yes I've tried this too!  but I'd really love a procedural solution!  I''l have another look at Hetzen's square noise and see if I can develop that.

[mhaze]

Hetzen's idea of using colour adjust to clump displacements works woo hoo!

[Dune]

I've used Jon's setup (extra mixing within the setup) for quite a while now, and it works fine. But the image map (mixed) is extremely low in nodes, and works just as fine.