How to create that broken stone wall?

YF_Sticks

Hey everyone,

Wanted to ask if any of you have a good idea how to create this broken wall effect where you have the base-stone wall but then it is broken off. You often see this in old castle structures and ruins:

(right image is a quixel scan but gives the idea across)

My idea is to obviously sculpt the damaged detail - but how would I go about texturing it? Create a modular brick set and create a texture for the damage-grout surface? If it's a large asset - you can't really texture it as unique, since you need to retain texture resolution over large surfaces.

Any practical ideas or workflows (or tutorials, I couldn't find one) is appreciated!

Thanks!

Eric Chadwick

Create three tiling texture sets (color, roughness, normal): regular stone bricks, broken stones jumble, dirt/grime.

Model the wall with a low-res broken edge. UV the regular bricks texture onto it.

Model specific low-res stones that are carefully placed along the broken edge, and uv them carefully to match the underlying low-res wall.

Use texture blending to mix in the broken-stones texture, for variation and damage. Also mix in the dirt/grime texture, especially across the main face of the wall, to break up tiling.

For an example (without any blending) see the roof piece here https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/1465422/#Comment_1465422
Tons more further in the thread.
 

YF_Sticks

You're very helpful Eric, thank you! That was pretty much what I had in mind.

I was thinking to model the stone wall -> map the brick texture to it -> place 3D-Bricks along the edge to hide seam/add variation and breakup silhouette -> ZBrush damage pass on the plane between the two outer wall faces to get a unique normal -> combine everything in Max and map the broken-stones texture in the middle -> add overall dirt mask to asset