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General => File Sharing => Shaders, Materials => Topic started by: Hetzen on February 06, 2016, 05:30:21 PM

Title: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Hetzen on February 06, 2016, 05:30:21 PM
Dune's Roman road got me thinking about making a procedural cobble pattern. With a bit of tweaking could be made into a brick pattern too I guess.[attachimg=1]
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: masonspappy on February 06, 2016, 07:22:26 PM
Excellent! Thanks!
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Hetzen on February 06, 2016, 07:24:28 PM
Pleasure.  :)
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: fleetwood on February 06, 2016, 11:17:16 PM
Thanks,
Makes plant-like funny fakerock too.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Dune on February 07, 2016, 01:55:02 AM
Thanks Jon, good to have this at hand.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: AP on February 07, 2016, 03:52:07 AM
Crazy but something very neat to use.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: mhaze on February 07, 2016, 05:54:14 AM
Thanks Jon - Handy to have.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Kadri on February 07, 2016, 07:27:21 AM

Looks very useful. Thanks.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: bobbystahr on February 07, 2016, 10:41:01 AM
Thanks Jon, have wanted one of these clips like for ever....
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: AP on February 07, 2016, 04:37:35 PM
Maybe some of the functions in these threads can be used to color the blocks?

http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,9147.msg186078.html#msg186078

http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,21015.msg209973.html#msg209973

Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: TheBadger on February 07, 2016, 07:09:20 PM
Good one. Thanks!
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Oshyan on February 07, 2016, 10:38:04 PM
Nice!

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Hannes on February 09, 2016, 05:12:53 PM
Great!! Thanks Jon!!
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: WAS on February 15, 2016, 08:30:27 PM
Brilliant job! This is great for paths
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Lady of the Lake on February 16, 2016, 12:21:25 AM
Thank you.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: René on January 07, 2019, 06:29:56 AM
Thanks for sharing.
I played a bit with this file and I must say that it gives good results for making rocks when more variation is added. Of course there is room for improvement, as always. :)
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Dune on January 07, 2019, 08:24:00 AM
That is pretty cool. Must be played carefully by the looks of some. I like the first test best, actually.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: René on January 07, 2019, 08:40:09 AM
Exploding geometry is always lurking. Sooner or later I will have to add a compute normal but I will only do that at the very last if there is no other way.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Dune on January 07, 2019, 09:29:42 AM
Yes, that's right, but the sooner actually the better, or it will have to compute a lot.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Hetzen on January 07, 2019, 08:46:32 PM
I've always loved your rock work Rene. Thanks for trying this out.

Yeah you're right Ulco, you have to be careful with any displacement, those inside-out normals can be a real pain. I was playing around with a 'minecraft' type of function, which sort of works, but as you can see from the two pics below have issues.

This uses the modulo function to break up an input terrain into cubes. It's more of a proof of concept. It's a bit clunky as you can see by the texture 'flags' you can see on the tops.
[attachimg=1]

Here's the same terrain and function, but with a random expansion per zone. Different light position too. Again more issues to work out. Neither needs a Compute at this stage.
[attachimg=2]

Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Kadri on January 07, 2019, 09:37:17 PM

Interesting. Is this only with one surface (last image especially) ? It is probably, but i just want to be sure :)
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: bobbystahr on January 07, 2019, 10:15:52 PM
Even more brilliant...keep. on. tweaking.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Dune on January 08, 2019, 02:15:44 AM
Interesting indeed, too bad about the stretched parts. A PF over it and a lot will be far less visible, I guess. This would (could) work well on volumetrics, if/where only the outside visible areas were rendered.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Hannes on January 08, 2019, 03:23:20 AM
Wow, this is cool, Jon! I hope you can tweak this further.
And René, your rock stuff looks brillant as well.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: René on January 09, 2019, 05:37:50 AM
Quote from: Hetzen on January 07, 2019, 08:46:32 PM
I've always loved your rock work Rene. Thanks for trying this out.

Yeah you're right Ulco, you have to be careful with any displacement, those inside-out normals can be a real pain. I was playing around with a 'minecraft' type of function, which sort of works, but as you can see from the two pics below have issues.

This uses the modulo function to break up an input terrain into cubes. It's more of a proof of concept. It's a bit clunky as you can see by the texture 'flags' you can see on the tops.
[attachimg=1]

Here's the same terrain and function, but with a random expansion per zone. Different light position too. Again more issues to work out. Neither needs a Compute at this stage.
[attachimg=2]



The second is very interesting. It almost looks like there are overhangs. Would that be possible? :)
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: René on January 09, 2019, 05:48:24 AM
Another iteration. It's still looks a bit wobbly.
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.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Hannes on January 09, 2019, 05:53:05 AM
That's awesome, René!!!
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: archonforest on January 09, 2019, 06:00:17 AM
Two thumbs up! Wish to know how to create something like this.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Dune on January 09, 2019, 06:06:04 AM
Very cool!
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: mhaze on January 09, 2019, 06:50:07 AM
Wow! René, that last one is amazing!
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Kadri on January 09, 2019, 08:10:39 AM

Nice rocks René.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Hetzen on January 09, 2019, 08:57:09 PM
Quote from: René on January 09, 2019, 05:37:50 AM
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.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Hetzen on January 09, 2019, 09:02:34 PM
Quote from: René on January 09, 2019, 05:48:24 AM
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.....
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: Jo Kariboo on January 09, 2019, 10:08:17 PM
Your rocks are as always excellent!
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: René on January 10, 2019, 05:40:59 AM
Quote from: Hetzen on January 09, 2019, 09:02:34 PM
Quote from: René on January 09, 2019, 05:48:24 AM
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.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: WAS on January 11, 2019, 05:03:01 PM
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.
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: René on January 12, 2019, 03:12:19 AM
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. 
Title: Re: Cobble Pattern
Post by: René on January 12, 2019, 03:18:14 AM
It may be because I feed the textures through a Transform Shader 'use world space enabled'.