Muddy ground - collecting ideas

[N-drju]

I plan to create a reasonably large patch of a dark, wet, muddy ground that bears marks of heavy vehicle and pedestrian movement. I was wondering how you would approach such task?

My idea is that this wet terrain should look as if it was plowed time and again by vehicles. I think it would be good to add three brownish layers of "mud" fractal to the affected area. The outside area would be light brown, while the center - dark brown with a touch of reflectivity. To make it look as if it was wet.

As far as the vehicle tracks are concerned... I don't actually need any distinguishable tire marks, because the whole area will be seen from a distance - about 30-40 meters. However, I would like to have some visible displacements running through the wet ground.

If you have any tips for or experience with creating rain-soaked paths or ground, don't be shy and share it.

[WAS]

I plan to create a reasonably large patch of a dark, wet, muddy ground that bears marks of heavy vehicle and pedestrian movement. I was wondering how you would approach such task?

My idea is that this wet terrain should look as if it was plowed time and again by vehicles. I think it would be good to add three brownish layers of "mud" fractal to the affected area. The outside area would be light brown, while the center - dark brown with a touch of reflectivity. To make it look as if it was wet.

As far as the vehicle tracks are concerned... I don't actually need any distinguishable tire marks, because the whole area will be seen from a distance - about 30-40 meters. However, I would like to have some visible displacements running through the wet ground.

If you have any tips for or experience with creating rain-soaked paths or ground, don't be shy and share it.

Image maps would be useful for your tire tracks, or you could use SSS with smooth fictionalization to give it variation (turning of the vehicle). Overlay a bunch of them in different rotations. Footpaths could just bee a SSS stretched out and a bit wider than tire tracks, fractalized as well, but rougher for the different in foot placements and terrain treading.

[Dune]

Wouldn't be too hard. Indeed some muddy colors and a mix of small billowy pf and some small fake stones, masked out (partially, by pf) by a set of mixed/added warped stretched SSS shapes. Use the same mask for displacing the tracks to give them some wetness, and maybe add another large pf for some overall puddles/patches of wetness.

[N-drju]

Okay, so this is the "draft" attempt of the muddy ground - a part of a path leading up to a wider area.

[attach=1]

I figured out that I'll make two layers - one semi-wet border area and one "slushy", very wet area through which vehicles are usually running.

I am not satisfied with the border colors (too smooth I think?) and I am not satisfied with the reflectivity... I think neither would you. Perhaps I need another look at how you made those puddles Sasquatch...

The surrounding area will of course be updated for actual vegetation.

[N-drju]

This one's probably better as there is more randomness to it. Mud layer has that splattered look to it, as if a vehicle was passing through at high speed. I still need to work on appropriate levels of reflectivity though.

[attach=1]

[WAS]

This one's probably better as there is more randomness to it. Mud layer has that splattered look to it, as if a vehicle was passing through at high speed. I still need to work on appropriate levels of reflectivity though.

[attach=1]

Oh well done on the update, it's starting to come along nicely. You could also play with noise stretching a bit on the X axis, or warp, to simulate the effect it was splattered in a direction.

[N-drju]

I think I'll skip that step because, as I mentioned, the whole wetness will be viewed from at least 100m. So an effect like this will probably not be too distinct.

I'm now pondering over Ulco's suggestion concerning the fake stones. Maybe... But I don't know how I could put them to use as part of the mud.

[Dune]

You could make a billow PF with rather small scales, say 0.2 5 0.01, with some displacement like 0.2 and feed that into a small (0.1-0.2 or so) fake stone with a patched distribution, as well as into the input of that stone. No colors in stone. Add that to the ground, and you should have some rough ground with some displaced rough stones.
For muddy ground I'd take a pf, not too rough and use the unclamped colors to displace ground (so feed into displacement shader) and also use as inverse mask for some reflection; so you have reflection only in depressed areas. You may have to clamp the mask output or you get funny colors in the masks, though it won't influence the mask afaik.
Also use the track lines to add reflection in the tracks, you can simply use an 'add' blue node with the pf that does the highs and lows, but invert the output of the high/low pf first (so lows are white, and tracks are white, so you get reflection in tracks and lows. Etc.
You can do all this without any compute terrain, so dump all, and just add some surface shaders after the base colors where you put stuff.

[N-drju]

Ulco, thanks for describing the process. I mean, I noted your first ideas and now have an effect that I was after.

Now, I was only looking on how to employ the FSS into the mud. Some sort of enhancement to what was already done.