I was playing around with a new workflow for volcanic/extreme-condition weathered rocks not long ago.
It's based of a tutorial i saw ages on using Displace to create normal rocks. So i upped the ante a little.
These are not sculpted btw'
Edit, Mini Tutorial below/ Credit to the original tutorial writer whoever that was, that inspired me for this ver.
-Very rough base mesh/shape
-Turbosmooth (3/5)
-Displace With Cellular map (Not a material)
/Use 'spherical mode' normally. Offset the Gizmo to the side you want the rocks to point at. (The front peak in this case)
/Cellular Settings;
-Displace With Instanced Cellular Map (Not a material)
/Use 'spherical mode' normally. Offset the Gizmo to the Opposite side you want the rocks to point at.( The bottom back in this case)
-Last Displace use the Marble Material below.
/Place in the middle bottom or top of the mesh, Low power as this is simply a surface noise extra.
/Marble Settings;
Still needs refinement but it's a pretty open ended workflow.
Hi, the workflow is similar to what naughty dog's guys explained in the "Vertex" bible, or behrooz roozbeh on the zbrush central's uncharted 2 thread, plus a lot of tries ^^
For more info, and a really useful and in depth incredible tutorial, check these videos from bradford smith : ZBrush Tileable Textures 01 - 2.5D Workflow - YouTube
For the stones it's pretty much the same, for the rock wall, here is a really quick overview :
It's the Ztool i used, pretty simple.
I used 2.5d canvas and composed the texture, using every face of the subtool, and make it tile by scrolling with the tilede hotkey.
When it's done, i just make an alpha grab and different renders of the canvas, with differents matcap that i tweak to get interesting masks, and a normal map with the normal matcap as well.
I also use an ambiant occlusion render, sort of, wich is obtained with a simple light setting, in my case a single frontal light, with tweaked shadows.
Then i use mask and some pattern in combination with color gradient, color fill, texture, or whatever i need, and composed them in photoshop.
Final diffuse.
Now THIS is invaluable to me.... I can sculpt the rocks and what not but I have always had trouble creating the texture myself without using photo manipulation that ends up looking crap...
Nice thread! Rocks are cool but pretty tricky to get good looking I think. Trying a few new techniques tonight and I think it looks pretty cool so far. The shape of the rock is kind of funny but it's just testing some new stuff like I said.
I only did some rocks some time ago and since then I've been doing stuff completely unrelated... So this is the first rock I do in a long time, and hopefully the first of many I will be doing soon!
It looks kinda bad, lacking detail and also the texture and material isn't correct. But hey, gotta start from somewhere!
Edit; Oh and I'm a huge fan of the stuff Rogelio did for The Last of Us. Becoming good enough to even bother sending my portfolio to Naughty Dog is going to take some looooong time :P
It looks kinda bad, lacking detail and also the texture and material isn't correct. But hey, gotta start from somewhere!
That looks pretty good for a first try. It wouldn't look out of place in something a bit stylized. Maybe a few cracks, dents, and similar small details would make it more convincing.
Hey Sprunghunt, thanks for the comments. Yeah, I gotta work on adding more small detail. Here's another rock I did last night:
Shape is still quite funky, but I'm starting to feel a bit more satisfied with the texture detail. Still needs some more cracks and whatnot, but I'll keep working on this until I do something I'm OK with :P
Working on a new rock now. I tried baking the normal map on the low poly mesh (image above), but after baking I noticed a bunch of spots that still were lacking a lot of detail, so I'll go back to ZBrush and fix those areas, then start working on the textures!
I really like the displacement in the different bricks. I would really like to see the normal map used for this wall, also how did you do it? Did you made a low-poly then a high-poly after or you just went in ZB?
You realize that you need to do a breakdown, or at least in short tell us about your workflow. You can't just show something like this without doing so!
Here's my latest (and 4th) rock I've done. Getting more used to some stuff, but this time the cracks look way too fake. I will fix that one next time I do rocks.
@Mik2121 yeah man, it looks kind of that, but my shader is just a default marmoset material, maybe a red glow post-effect is causing that sensation, I realized about it today, also there is a bit of chromatic aberration, which might be helping too...
You realize that you need to do a breakdown, or at least in short tell us about your workflow. You can't just show something like this without doing so!
since the rock is basically a Rectangular Prism the UVs are just cut along opposite long edges, and then the top and bottom are separated. Normals are derived from high poly sculpt in Zbrush decimated and baked in Mudbox. Textures were quite simple, AO bake, Edge bake from Mudbox (just AO pass with negative filter setting). then a base rock texture, and I hand painted some highlights of the bigger edges. rendered in marmoset
Contak: ive got a tutorial series i did a year or so back that explains my process of this from start to finish. some things may be a bit dated now but maybe you can pick up something from it.
Here's my latest (and 4th) rock I've done. Getting more used to some stuff, but this time the cracks look way too fake. I will fix that one next time I do rocks.
I really like that, would love to hear your workflow. You definitely got those hard rock like edges going on, looks really nice.
I really like that, would love to hear your workflow. You definitely got those hard rock like edges going on, looks really nice.
Nothing special, really. Mostly following the tutorials posted here.
So the process (which I barely modified) is:
1) Start with some basic mesh like a box or cylinder and make it a Dynamesh. Give it some basic shape so it doesn't look like a cylinder.
2) Copy the mesh and place it nearby, changing the shape and everything. Then merge it with the earlier part.
- Now here it depends on the complexity of the piece you're trying to build -
3) Give some detail to the new merged mesh but not too much to the point where it's easy to tell you copy&pasted it.
4) Copy mesh and move it around to get some more complex shapes (I didn't do this for my last rock)
5) Merge and start giving more and more detail.
That's the process I follow to get all the rocks merged.
Now for the sculpting, I use mostly use TrimDynamic for the basic shapes and TrymSmoothBorder (you have to load it, the tutorials use it too) for some extra detail and more natural-looking shapes. At first it was a bit difficult for me to use it, but after getting used to it you can 80% of the times guess what's going to happen, but with some random stuff around so it feels more natural (to me at least).
Another thing I do a bit is making masks and then moving the masked part to create really sharp angles, then re-Dynamesh it.
After I get the final shape I just go to town with it and add all the details.
Be aware though, that I'm still learning myself. I can't say this is THE way to go, but at least the way I'm trying to do my rocks.
damn WrichWK those are very cool stylized rocks. Can you post a link where were can see more for Arc Squadron? I want to see the application of these textures as well as the overall art direction of the environments. Textures look very cool
Replies
Here are some of mine~
thanks for sharing all
Thanks for the heads up, man
Lol
this isn't reddit or youtube. creating vanity accounts for a single posts is just a waste of time.
It's based of a tutorial i saw ages on using Displace to create normal rocks. So i upped the ante a little.
These are not sculpted btw'
Edit, Mini Tutorial below/ Credit to the original tutorial writer whoever that was, that inspired me for this ver.
-Very rough base mesh/shape
-Turbosmooth (3/5)
-Displace With Cellular map (Not a material)
/Use 'spherical mode' normally. Offset the Gizmo to the side you want the rocks to point at. (The front peak in this case)
/Cellular Settings;
-Displace With Instanced Cellular Map (Not a material)
/Use 'spherical mode' normally. Offset the Gizmo to the Opposite side you want the rocks to point at.( The bottom back in this case)
-Last Displace use the Marble Material below.
/Place in the middle bottom or top of the mesh, Low power as this is simply a surface noise extra.
/Marble Settings;
Still needs refinement but it's a pretty open ended workflow.
Now THIS is invaluable to me.... I can sculpt the rocks and what not but I have always had trouble creating the texture myself without using photo manipulation that ends up looking crap...
going to give this a shot for sure! Thanks!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/58705466@N05/sets/72157636674063983/
Also if you haven't seen his stuff, he has some sweet foliage you guys will get a kick out of over here.
It looks kinda bad, lacking detail and also the texture and material isn't correct. But hey, gotta start from somewhere!
Edit; Oh and I'm a huge fan of the stuff Rogelio did for The Last of Us. Becoming good enough to even bother sending my portfolio to Naughty Dog is going to take some looooong time :P
That looks pretty good for a first try. It wouldn't look out of place in something a bit stylized. Maybe a few cracks, dents, and similar small details would make it more convincing.
Shape is still quite funky, but I'm starting to feel a bit more satisfied with the texture detail. Still needs some more cracks and whatnot, but I'll keep working on this until I do something I'm OK with :P
I love rocks too.
Working on a new rock now. I tried baking the normal map on the low poly mesh (image above), but after baking I noticed a bunch of spots that still were lacking a lot of detail, so I'll go back to ZBrush and fix those areas, then start working on the textures!
This is so sexy. How did you work out your UVs and texture along with the NM?
I really like the displacement in the different bricks. I would really like to see the normal map used for this wall, also how did you do it? Did you made a low-poly then a high-poly after or you just went in ZB?
You realize that you need to do a breakdown, or at least in short tell us about your workflow. You can't just show something like this without doing so!
Also :thumbup:
Here's my latest (and 4th) rock I've done. Getting more used to some stuff, but this time the cracks look way too fake. I will fix that one next time I do rocks.
I hope you like it
Looking good! I like your texture, but... what shader are you using? It looks like subsurface scattering, which is kinda weird on a rock :P
+1
since the rock is basically a Rectangular Prism the UVs are just cut along opposite long edges, and then the top and bottom are separated. Normals are derived from high poly sculpt in Zbrush decimated and baked in Mudbox. Textures were quite simple, AO bake, Edge bake from Mudbox (just AO pass with negative filter setting). then a base rock texture, and I hand painted some highlights of the bigger edges. rendered in marmoset
https://vimeo.com/user5355143/videos
It is something more like a sea/river rock, I hope you like it as I like yours
Nothing special, really. Mostly following the tutorials posted here.
So the process (which I barely modified) is:
1) Start with some basic mesh like a box or cylinder and make it a Dynamesh. Give it some basic shape so it doesn't look like a cylinder.
2) Copy the mesh and place it nearby, changing the shape and everything. Then merge it with the earlier part.
- Now here it depends on the complexity of the piece you're trying to build -
3) Give some detail to the new merged mesh but not too much to the point where it's easy to tell you copy&pasted it.
4) Copy mesh and move it around to get some more complex shapes (I didn't do this for my last rock)
5) Merge and start giving more and more detail.
That's the process I follow to get all the rocks merged.
Now for the sculpting, I use mostly use TrimDynamic for the basic shapes and TrymSmoothBorder (you have to load it, the tutorials use it too) for some extra detail and more natural-looking shapes. At first it was a bit difficult for me to use it, but after getting used to it you can 80% of the times guess what's going to happen, but with some random stuff around so it feels more natural (to me at least).
Another thing I do a bit is making masks and then moving the masked part to create really sharp angles, then re-Dynamesh it.
After I get the final shape I just go to town with it and add all the details.
Be aware though, that I'm still learning myself. I can't say this is THE way to go, but at least the way I'm trying to do my rocks.
Some rocks I did a while back, most of the images are flat textures.