Hi guys,
intrigued by Bob's renders integrating the fake stone pack with the sand shader, I have tried this myself.
I think I have gathered a little experience integrating the two in one scene, which will be useful once the sand shader is out.
The two packs are an ideal combination, asthetically, but it requires some fine tuning to make them both shine together. Not much, but it's important to use the right scales, smoothing and intersection. Once that's done, using the two together is easy.
The first render you see isn't perfect. I am showing it to demonstrate how I went about integrating the two. I have used a simplified stone bed (as you can see from the foreground rock) to speed up render times, because I was just testing.
What have I done wrong in the first render? Nothing, really, but I wanted more of the smaller pebbles to show, which are covered by the sand unfortunately. So down with the sand dislacement. Also down with patch sizes, to fill up the little gaps between stones more granually.
I also thought it would be nice if the sand would not cover steeper areas, so added another blend shader with a slope constraint. Adjusting the fuzzy zone. When the sand was "down" enough, sizes adjusted, the underlying fake stone bed got his color back. Previously, the stones where somehow colored by the sand, while not being covered by the sand.
That's it (second render). A quick doodle, that required some fine tuning. Especially because the scales used are soooo small. tiny grains of sand between half centimeter pebbles... You know what I mean.
Isn't this program amazing?
Frank
