The digital tutors UE4 rock pipeline has a couple interesting techniques in Zbrush that aren't in other Rock tutorials. Was kind of neat.
Don't really like my sculpts shape.
Anyways, just followed the texturing portion from that tutorial to get into and learn Ue4.
Here is my first time doing a rock. 1024 base textures and 512 detail albedo and normals.
And the sculpt (kept pretty clean to accommodate detail normals)
Textures look fine, but i'm not sure i like the look on the rock itself. The smooth shape along with some of the hard details doesn't really fit together that well.
Textures look fine, but i'm not sure i like the look on the rock itself. The smooth shape along with some of the hard details doesn't really fit together that well.
I think it looks like a perfect glacial erratic like boulder.
Textures look fine, but i'm not sure i like the look on the rock itself. The smooth shape along with some of the hard details doesn't really fit together that well.
The idea is to have a rock I can reuse at different angles to produce a different look. I can stick the smooth side into the ground and get something angular and broken looking or do the reverse and get some smooth and weathered.
Hi,
here's my collection of photoscanned rocks
Sketchfab:
[SKETCHFAB]f5fdf2c55bb347cea15b307e86e2f54d[/SKETCHFAB]
[SKETCHFAB]4627d09dccf74004a9e08edb74671837[/SKETCHFAB]
And here are more rocks screens from Unity 3D: http://u3d.as/cCd
Hey guys, after lurking this thread and getting my own tablet, I thought I'd give rocks a go. For this, I was going for a slab of granite, but I was unambitious with the shape; the next rocks will be using new techniques.
Go nuts with critique, I'm going to try bigger formations in future.
Here is a rock I made yesterday for my Abandoned Swamp Environment I'm actually really happy with it. Spent some time going through this thread and picked up some good tips. It's sculpted in ZBrush using mainly the Trim Dynamic and Trim Smooth Border brushes. I made a few custom rock alphas to ensure it had some uniqueness to it. I baked in Xnormal and textured it in Photoshop using various masks and tileable base textures from a small library I made. I can't believe how relaxing and fun it is to make rocks. I plan on making 5-7 of them in various sizes and then maybe make 1-2 tilable ground textures from them for the terrain.
Came back and gave rocks another shot with some new techniques picked up in this very thread. Wanted to try and address some shortcomings with my rocks from last time.
Zbrush screencap (IDK how to make bigger renders in Zbrush :P)
Next, I might try to make a tiling texture of some kind.Rocks are fun, really satisfying to bake and texture.
This weekend I was practicing different techniques for creating rocks. Here is my large cliff rock work in progress I'm happy with after many failed attempts. This is the high poly.
My first attempt at rock. It's supposed to be asteroid hence so little variation in color and softer edges because of space dust erosion.
Actually I'd like to ask for suggestion what space rocks should look like because it's almost impossible to get decent references (for obvious reasons).
Modular cliff set. Fairly simple stuff. A straight and an inner and outer corner. I think I like em so I'll go ahead and lattice out some ramp variants.
So much amazing inspiration in this thread. As an aspiring environment artist, you guys have given me a lot to strive for.
Here is the third rock I've created in ZBrush, images are the low poly that sits around 1500 tris with just the normal on it so far. Currently working on baking the rest of the maps then I'll be off to texturing.
This weekend I was practicing different techniques for creating rocks. Here is my large cliff rock work in progress I'm happy with after many failed attempts. This is the high poly.
yurid9 you will probably be surprised to know the workflow I landed on had almost no sculpting.
1. Model rough shapes in Maya.
2. Chamer all the verts.
3. Chamfer all the verts again with a slightly different setting.
4. Boolean union all shapes together.
5. Decimate the mesh to get some randomness.
6. Boolean difference to cut large chunks away to get the flat planes.
7. Import as Voxel quads in 3D coat to clean up nasty tris and ngons from Maya. 9million for the final result. This will automatically smooth some super sharp edges as well.
8. Export as .fbx 9million and open in Mudbox.
9. Grab some rock texture from CG textures.
10. Import into Knald as derivitive map, not colour map, this gives you the nice hard edges and looks rocky. Then also set input map type to derivitive.
11. Export the height map as 16bit or higher, I used 32bit tiff.
12. In Mudbox drag out the imprint tool as big as you can that you got out of Knald, the small patterns make it look less realistic.
That's it, I've attached some screenshots for reference below and if you look at gloriousczar's rocks above they were built using this same technique except the last step was done in Zbrush instead of Mudbox as he's a Z guy and I'm a Mud guy.
The magic for me after a full day of experimentation was the derivitive map in Knald to get sharp rock height maps, but also the realization that the more I sculpted the rock the less good it looked. Basically getting some nice chunky noise and then boolean it off to create the flat areas is the way to go. Could be done in any software really.
yurid9 you will probably be surprised to know the workflow I landed on had almost no sculpting.
+1 to this workflow, its super fast. The rock that I posted last page took only a few hours and that was my first time trying Malcolm's method.
Also, I wanted to add a couple images I put together to show the power of derivative maps in Knald. Sometimes if loading something as a colour map doesn't give me the result I want I'll try using this instead because it can give you sharp angles and a lot of depth in your normal map. I just took a random rock texture (its not tiling but I'm not super worried about that right now).
I grab my derivative map out of Knald (using copy and paste of course) and just overlay it over a flat 128 128 255 normal map colour and that's pretty much it.
Here's the comparison between loading a texture as colour, normal and derivative in marmoset on a flat plane with no displacement and you can see the difference. #2 and 3 are pretty similar but #3 has a bit more depth.
I remember loading a texture as derivative by mistake. I just couldn't believe the results. I spent the next hour or so loading random textures just to see what they would look like :poly124:
I am still to convert them into heightmap and import them into Zbrush. I was not thinking about it at the time.
yurid9 you will probably be surprised to know the workflow I landed on had almost no sculpting.
1. Model rough shapes in Maya.
2. Chamer all the verts.
3. Chamfer all the verts again with a slightly different setting.
4. Boolean union all shapes together.
5. Decimate the mesh to get some randomness.
6. Boolean difference to cut large chunks away to get the flat planes.
7. Import as Voxel quads in 3D coat to clean up nasty tris and ngons from Maya. 9million for the final result. This will automatically smooth some super sharp edges as well.
8. Export as .fbx 9million and open in Mudbox.
9. Grab some rock texture from CG textures.
10. Import into Knald as derivitive map, not colour map, this gives you the nice hard edges and looks rocky. Then also set input map type to derivitive.
11. Export the height map as 16bit or higher, I used 32bit tiff.
12. In Mudbox drag out the imprint tool as big as you can that you got out of Knald, the small patterns make it look less realistic.
That's it, I've attached some screenshots for reference below and if you look at gloriousczar's rocks above they were built using this same technique except the last step was done in Zbrush instead of Mudbox as he's a Z guy and I'm a Mud guy.
The magic for me after a full day of experimentation was the derivitive map in Knald to get sharp rock height maps, but also the realization that the more I sculpted the rock the less good it looked. Basically getting some nice chunky noise and then boolean it off to create the flat areas is the way to go. Could be done in any software really.
Wow can't wait to try this technique later tonight when I get home. Thanks for sharing
I suppose it's relevant to share a method I use for getting PBR color maps
Instead of inverting and soft light try this
use magic wand or select color on the areas that have shadow
play with fuzziness until you get a selection that contains any dark ares of the texture
expend ~4 pixels then feather two pixels
Many times you can simply run offset to get a good result but if you need to you can make the selection into a mask and rotate/flip/clone an underlying layer
Replies
Trying tessellation for the first time! Bit of errors!
Note that i've only been modeling these. The textures was generated by another fella.
Great work! How did you derive a heightmap for this? Was it texture > Normal > Heightmap using something like Quixel or B2M?
And the sculpt (kept pretty clean to accommodate detail normals)
I have been following this: http://www.digitaltutors.com/tutorial/2013-Creating-Rock-Structures-for-Games-in-ZBrush-and-Unreal-Engine
Quite good. This one is also good: [ame]
Don't really like my sculpts shape.
Anyways, just followed the texturing portion from that tutorial to get into and learn Ue4.
How did you create the textured white/highlights on the edges of these rocks?
I think it looks like a perfect glacial erratic like boulder.
haha yeah I wish I could paint
The idea is to have a rock I can reuse at different angles to produce a different look. I can stick the smooth side into the ground and get something angular and broken looking or do the reverse and get some smooth and weathered.
Tiling cave wall:
Trying out rocks again
[SKETCHFAB]97bfb335f9eb4eeca5c214bd7091bbd5[/SKETCHFAB]
here's my collection of photoscanned rocks
Sketchfab:
[SKETCHFAB]f5fdf2c55bb347cea15b307e86e2f54d[/SKETCHFAB]
[SKETCHFAB]4627d09dccf74004a9e08edb74671837[/SKETCHFAB]
And here are more rocks screens from Unity 3D:
http://u3d.as/cCd
Go nuts with critique, I'm going to try bigger formations in future.
[SKETCHFAB]159adea17da346ff87ecfc9f3be98ae3[/SKETCHFAB]
Here is a rock I made yesterday for my Abandoned Swamp Environment I'm actually really happy with it. Spent some time going through this thread and picked up some good tips. It's sculpted in ZBrush using mainly the Trim Dynamic and Trim Smooth Border brushes. I made a few custom rock alphas to ensure it had some uniqueness to it. I baked in Xnormal and textured it in Photoshop using various masks and tileable base textures from a small library I made. I can't believe how relaxing and fun it is to make rocks. I plan on making 5-7 of them in various sizes and then maybe make 1-2 tilable ground textures from them for the terrain.
Zbrush screencap (IDK how to make bigger renders in Zbrush :P)
Next, I might try to make a tiling texture of some kind.Rocks are fun, really satisfying to bake and texture.
I love the lighting / presentation of this? What software, Marmoset? Tips/Tricks?
More pictures are available on my Artstation
Actually I'd like to ask for suggestion what space rocks should look like because it's almost impossible to get decent references (for obvious reasons).
Here is the third rock I've created in ZBrush, images are the low poly that sits around 1500 tris with just the normal on it so far. Currently working on baking the rest of the maps then I'll be off to texturing.
This is pretty sweet Kurt, nice job.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=122622&page=5
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/hdfgfg
1. Model rough shapes in Maya.
2. Chamer all the verts.
3. Chamfer all the verts again with a slightly different setting.
4. Boolean union all shapes together.
5. Decimate the mesh to get some randomness.
6. Boolean difference to cut large chunks away to get the flat planes.
7. Import as Voxel quads in 3D coat to clean up nasty tris and ngons from Maya. 9million for the final result. This will automatically smooth some super sharp edges as well.
8. Export as .fbx 9million and open in Mudbox.
9. Grab some rock texture from CG textures.
10. Import into Knald as derivitive map, not colour map, this gives you the nice hard edges and looks rocky. Then also set input map type to derivitive.
11. Export the height map as 16bit or higher, I used 32bit tiff.
12. In Mudbox drag out the imprint tool as big as you can that you got out of Knald, the small patterns make it look less realistic.
That's it, I've attached some screenshots for reference below and if you look at gloriousczar's rocks above they were built using this same technique except the last step was done in Zbrush instead of Mudbox as he's a Z guy and I'm a Mud guy.
The magic for me after a full day of experimentation was the derivitive map in Knald to get sharp rock height maps, but also the realization that the more I sculpted the rock the less good it looked. Basically getting some nice chunky noise and then boolean it off to create the flat areas is the way to go. Could be done in any software really.
Thanks Malcolm!
+1 to this workflow, its super fast. The rock that I posted last page took only a few hours and that was my first time trying Malcolm's method.
Also, I wanted to add a couple images I put together to show the power of derivative maps in Knald. Sometimes if loading something as a colour map doesn't give me the result I want I'll try using this instead because it can give you sharp angles and a lot of depth in your normal map. I just took a random rock texture (its not tiling but I'm not super worried about that right now).
I grab my derivative map out of Knald (using copy and paste of course) and just overlay it over a flat 128 128 255 normal map colour and that's pretty much it.
Here's the comparison between loading a texture as colour, normal and derivative in marmoset on a flat plane with no displacement and you can see the difference. #2 and 3 are pretty similar but #3 has a bit more depth.
I am still to convert them into heightmap and import them into Zbrush. I was not thinking about it at the time.
I suppose it's relevant to share a method I use for getting PBR color maps
Instead of inverting and soft light try this
use magic wand or select color on the areas that have shadow
play with fuzziness until you get a selection that contains any dark ares of the texture
expend ~4 pixels then feather two pixels
Many times you can simply run offset to get a good result but if you need to you can make the selection into a mask and rotate/flip/clone an underlying layer
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=122622&page=6