Desert Sand dunes (Unity)

bgivenb

Here's a quick portfolio challenge. Sand dunes are one of the hardest terrain features to model, so I thought I'd put in my research and give it my best shot!



Edit: added sketchfab

model

dzibarik

looks very good, nothing to add really. except may be the thin line at the top of every dune should be more smooth and not get that uniform sand texture. But I have just looked through references and I haven't seen anything of sort so that may be just my perception.

SHEPEIRO

dunes are normally smooth on one side and rippled on the other:

bgivenb

@SHEPEIRO Hey that's a great observation, I've never noticed that before. I'm using a simple detail texture for my sand ripples, but I'll try to write a shader that allows for multiple UV mixing, so I can have a clean side to my dunes, without it looking sharp and fake

bgivenb

My idea is to use the vertex color to lerp between the sand ripples and smooth areas.

I started by painting vertex colors in blender to match the windward side of the dunes


I used shader forge in Unity to create a custom shader that will select between two detail normals based on the vertex color:

bgivenb

Still working on getting the color working correctly, but the normals are coming along nicely  
Edit: 
Got the colormap working correctly again

bgivenb

I wanted add something extra to the scene, so I made this little VW van to speed around the dunes  

dzibarik

I think dirt on the van is too uniform and blotchy. But from that distance it looks ok.

dzibarik

I think dirt on the van is too uniform and blotchy. But from that distance it looks ok.

Karimelhann

can you share your worldmachine file with us it looks so fucking good ?!