Here's some first work of my new sandshader I'm working on.
It still needs some work on the ripples.
Also I want to work more on the "creeping" effect of the sand.
As you can see in the bottom picture I encircled some areas in red where you can see that the sand crawls up the stones.
I want to emphasize this effect more, but it's quite hard to find the right settings.
The camera is at 1.75m above the surface, so what you see here is my first attempt at kinda real world scales.
Further I'd like to make some variations of this like desert, beach, wet, whatever...sand. Any ideas on variations would be greatly appreciated! :D
Any comments and ideas in general too of course :)
Martin
I have been using a Surface layer for my main sand distributions. I set the slope constraint with it. Then I add child surface layers for the color/displacement and fine control of the distribution of that layer. Doing this method and them adding my Grasses surface layer on top of it, I can get some great 'flow' onto the rock layers I start with.
Quote from: njeneb on June 21, 2009, 08:41:13 AM
I have been using a Surface layer for my main sand distributions. I set the slope constraint with it. Then I add child surface layers for the color/displacement and fine control of the distribution of that layer. Doing this method and them adding my Grasses surface layer on top of it, I can get some great 'flow' onto the rock layers I start with.
I appreciate your thoughts on this :) However, I'm working quite differently.
I don't use multiple surfacelayers, actually it's just one and it also has no contrictions for slope or height. There will probably ring a bell now in your head :)
The grain consists of 3 different colored fake stone layers on top of the base sand layer.
Ahh. Nope no bells.
I'm still doing things fairly rudimentarily. (speeling?) Looking forward to more insight on your method as you progress.
This image already looks good for itself, although it was just intended as a tech demo... ah well, the red circles annoy somewhat ;D
So you used really small fake stones? How small are they? :o
Quote from: MacGyver on June 21, 2009, 09:50:37 AM
This image already looks good for itself, although it was just intended as a tech demo... ah well, the red circles annoy somewhat ;D
Thanks, it's indeed just a demo. About the red circles: you must be kidding me
Quote from: MacGyver on June 21, 2009, 09:50:37 AM
So you used really small fake stones? How small are they? :o
Very small! ;D ;)
Wow, very nice work! Its the detail that makes the image.
This is incredible. The sand looks ultra-realistic! Please share your secrets to creating this sometime haha
very realistic, so far!....this looks excellent!
I'm guessing that this will end up in a Tech Pack - if so, the variants you suggested would be helpful, especially a nice light yellowish desert sand, plus guidance on how to achieve simple colour variations -e.g. that incredible red sand they have in the centre of Australia, the black sand of some of the Canary Isles, etc.. It does look pretty good already.
Quote from: domdib on June 21, 2009, 04:37:17 PM
I'm guessing that this will end up in a Tech Pack - if so, the variants you suggested would be helpful, especially a nice light yellowish desert sand, plus guidance on how to achieve simple colour variations -e.g. that incredible red sand they have in the centre of Australia, the black sand of some of the Canary Isles, etc.. It does look pretty good already.
I'm not sure if it will end up in a tech-pack...if not I will share it here entirely.
The ripples are a bit hard to implement into existing scenes and I have to find a way to make it work, anytime. If I can't I will probably share it.
To adjust colors you only need to change the colors of 4 nodes so far, so that's not too bad imo :)
I have a good idea which colors you're referring too, but if you could post some specific examples here of what you really would like to see then please post them here :)
Martin
Share! Share! Share! ;D
This looks superb!
Good job on the sand, very realistic ! (http://smileys.sur-la-toile.com/repository/Respect/bravo-applaudi-147.GIF)
Stunning!
How long does it take to render this?
Thank you all so far :)
Quote from: Hetzen on June 22, 2009, 04:15:17 AM
Stunning!
How long does it take to render this?
This is rendered at detail 1 and AA 6, rendertime was 25 minutes? Can't remember exactly.
I think when the sand is "bare" without any fake stones it will render much faster.
This image contains Frank's rockbed and has 10 fake stone layers if I remember correctly.
That slows down the rendering quite much.
I'll render it again tonight, because I'm absolutely not sure about the time I mentioned.
Martin
Here's a few colour suggestions.
Actually, the "yellow" sand is more of a peach colour I guess :)
Thanks for posting these, I'll get onto it.
Actually, I think the first image isn't that hard to reproduce in TG2. Most difficult would be the lighting actually.
Inspiration, nice! :)
Martin
Ok guys, Frank and I almost solved the integration problems for this technique within existing scenes.
The sand is made up of just 1 node :) Examples will follow somewhere this week :)
Martin
So what happened? Did you hit an unexpected hitch?
Yes and no. Primarily I didn't have much time for it, but I'm also still not very happy about the integration of this technique into other scenes. It's improved, but still not very reliable.
Excellent rippling sand.