The mud needs some work, I admit.
Maybe some puddles would increase the realism of the mud.
Greetings,
J
nice concept Dune. But its not reading as mud to me. Looks wet. But I don't feel like its any kind of surface I have seen in life.
That's why I wrote that the mud needed work ;-)
Try to smooth out the small peaks and most of the sand-grain stuff so it looks like wind- and water-slicked mud. As it is now it is shiny, like water is suspended in it, but it doesn't have that liquid consistency.
Not to go crazy with semantics, but in my opinion mud is still mud even if it is all dried out and cracking up.
You can go all sorts of ways with mud, and while experimenting I came up with a tidal marsh environment; very wet mud and some stagnant water in the lowest parts, dried out and a bit eroded in the upper parts, which are covered in veggies. I can do better than this (yes, we can), but it's much better than it was , IMHO.
I was experimenting with displacement based on color, added smooth step and a bias function with a ridgy perlin as function input to get some sort of eroded edges. Lowest areas (which I kept quite smooth) with a RT reflective shader. This has the benefit of wetness moving up-mud, so to speak, not the harsh line when 'lake' meets land.
Another version. First was made with a concocted procedural river system (z to scalar, sinus stuff, some SShape masks + another simple shape for the main stream), but that's far from perfect. I wish (hint, hint) someone would dream up a procedural blue node soft edged tapering 'tree' which can be used as a mask for a river with some random tributaries.
Second was made from a mask made in WM, some sort of flow system.
I very like the n. function-terraintest_28-04-13-v1.jpg (http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=16000.0;attach=42819), nice mud !!!
like these new ones much better.