Advice on modeling & texturing in-game mountain

franman

I have tried to model a low-poly-ocean-cliff-side-mountain for a mobile game.  Despite UV unwrapping it properly and applying PBR rock textures to it, it doesn't even come close to looking like a mountain.

Here is what the mountain looks like in Unity3D:

My method of making this mountain is that I use a spline to shape the particular outline of the mountain, then convert the spline to editable poly, extrude, added some segments and added a noise modifier.

The 3D program I used was 3Ds Max 2017.

Apocrs1980

I can't really tell what I am looking at here, it is definitely what you describe it to be, but I have no clue as to what the scale is suppose to be, did you unwrap the uvs or just apply a rock texture to it? 

franman

Apocrs1980 said:

did you unwrap the uvs or just apply a rock texture to it? 

franman said:

Despite UV unwrapping it properly and applying PBR rock textures to it, it doesn't even come close to looking like a mountain.

franman

This is what it looks like in UV and Wireframe.

RustySpannerz

You need more detail. Look at reference images and figure out what cliffs really look like. Maybe follow a tutorial on making rocks in 3d. Also, your UVs are causing visible seams which are making things look off. 

Apocrs1980

I found this hunting around on YouTube, it's a time lapse but it gives you an idea of how the guy did it (assuming your only using Max for the sculpting.) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FBCTI4MLMo

Again, I'm not sure of what scale your going for I can only guess at this, I am assuming that the player can not see the top of this cliff?
I'm really not trying to sound like a punk, just trying to understand what your aiming for so I can best offer some help.
If it's intended to be large enough in the play space that the top will never be visible you may consider just deleting the extra geo, if they are then you'll probably either want to detail the topology a bit or put a different texture to it to keep it interesting.

franman

Apocrs1980 said:

I'm not sure of what scale your going for I can only guess at this, I am assuming that the player can not see the top of this cliff?
I'm really not trying to sound like a punk, just trying to understand what your aiming for so I can best offer some help.
If it's intended to be large enough in the play space that the top will never be visible you may consider just deleting the extra geo, if they are then you'll probably either want to detail the topology a bit or put a different texture to it to keep it interesting.

I'll give a bit more detail about what my aim is.  I'm making a pinball-like game (just think of it as pinball).  So they will see the cliff from the top.  Since the game is for cell phones and tablets the length each mountain takes up is ~1/3rd the screen size.  For the width, it takes up ~1/6th of the screen size.  There are two mountains; both have caves and each are placed at both sides and are centered along the length of the screen.

Hopefully this will give you a better picture on what I'm trying to describe here.  If you still got questions and/or anything you are uncertain of feel free to ask.  I appreciate the help and feedback you're giving me and I will check out this vid.

BTW you don't even sound close to being punk.

Bedrock

Not a mobile dev but looks too low poly even for that platform. What's your tri budget? Aren't phones like 100k+?

franman

Good question, I'm not sure.

Besides that here's an update of my mountain tell me what you think.

this one is @ 11718 Polys.

Just realized I forgot to add a cave.

Apocrs1980

Looking better, mabye a snapshot of the angle the player is going to view it from? I was going to suggest fixing the uv's form where ever your player is going to view it from by stiching the islands together at those edges, such as the top and sides, the other thing was the texture looked a bit weired in the first pic. The second one is looking better.