Surface layer studies: sand

[MF_Erwan]

Erwan

[Tangled-Universe]

Nice start Erwan! You got the grainy look already, that's good. Perhaps you could make the grain even a tad smaller and render it at higher detail setting.
The ripples could use some work I think, but I know it's not that easy, because I'm working on the exact same thing by accident! Will show it within the next hours.

Martin

[MF_Erwan]

Perhaps you could make the grain even a tad smaller

That's posssible. I will try to change the scales of the "sand colour function", but they are already small: 0.001 for feature scale, 0.01 for lead-in scale and 0.001 for smallest scale. Perhaps increasing the contrast and/or the roughness will be better?

and render it at higher detail setting.

That isn't possible! Detail is already at 1 and AA at 3, maximum for the free version I have.
I will probably buy the full version one day, but I need to save some money.

Erwan

[Tangled-Universe]

Ah right, so you're already rendering at detail 1. I guess if you even lower the scales (although below 0.001 might give problems) I think the effect will be visible without having to increase the quality. My guess was that this image was rendered around 0.85 quality or so. Perhaps because of the low AA the small scales aren't working out the way the are supposed to be / you want to.

Martin

[Henry Blewer]

The ripple effect seems to be more apparent under the water surface. Maybe a reflective shader set to very low reflection would make the ripples pop.

[MF_Erwan]

Just changed the contrast of the sand colour function from 0.25 to 0.5 and the roughness from5 to 10. I only rendered a crop, since the full image took 8h

Erwan

[Tangled-Universe]

I'm pretty sure it's the lack of AA which doesn't make the small scales turn out as they're intended.
If you take a look at my sand image I posted today you can see the grains are smaller visually, but scale-wise they're bigger than yours.
I rendered that image with detail 1 and AA6.

[MF_Erwan]

So if I send you the file, would you be ok to make a render with higher AA for me?

Erwan

[neuspadrin]

I wouldn't be able to get to it til tonight, but I would be willing to do a render for you.  If you want just send the file with the settings you want to (myusernamehere)@ gmail.com

[MF_Erwan]

Ok, I completely remade my sand by using two layers: one with large scales and only 8 octaves for the ripples, and a child layer with very small scales and displacement with a colour function attached. It isn't finished yet after 9 hours (2*1.73Ghz, 1GB RAM), but I like the result.
neuspadrin, I will send you the file on the next days. But since I don't know the speed of your computer, I'll activate croping.

[tee]

Very convincing sand in my book