Experiment with Fake Stones

[j_petrucci]

Hi to everybody, this is my first attempt with some fake stones on a lake shore with some snowy mountains in the background.
The little black stones use a reflectivity shader to add some realism and to differentiate them from the bigger and whiter ones.
I hope you like it!



PS1: after rendering, I noticed that the lower right stone has too sharp angles, so now I'm making another version with a better point of view...
PS2: yes, I know that the muddy soil is not too convincing, but I still don't know how to make it better... any suggestions?

[tee]

Well from my limited knowledge, I would say you need to add a little displacement to your muddy soil layer and maybe a slightly different colour on another PF to break up the colour a bit so it doesn't look like a slab of one or two colours. Same would go for the mountain as well, you want the sun to cast more shadows etc to make it look more dramatic.
Have a scan through the forum there's lots of advice on how to improve different elements.

[Henry Blewer]

A couple power fractals would break up and add texture to the sand. I use a surface shader for my fake rocks. It gives you a chance to add lots of color and displacements using power fractals. You can make a new surface shader in the shaders node group. Don't connect it to anything yet. At the top of the fake stone shader link the new surface shader to the surface shader you made in the shaders node group. Now you can add the power fractals to the surface shader in the node group.
Remember to uncheck Blend as Stone Density at the bottom of the fake stones shader. This avoids weird displacement of the fake stones.

[j_petrucci]

@tee: ok, thanks for the suggestions!

@njeneb: I also used a surface shader on the fake rocks, but I'll try what you said, too... but what do you mean by adding power fractals to the sand? you mean concatenating another power fractal to the displacement or to the surface shader of the main terrain?

[Henry Blewer]

You can add as many child layers to a surface layer as you want. So if you want more displacement of a particular layer, add another power fractal and adjust the settings. More power fractals can be used in succession to make larger and larger displacements. I start with the smallest scales first, but this may not always be the best way.