Textures - Snow/Sand Bases

Ace-Angel

Hey to all,

I was wondering what are some tips to creating a basic 'snow' feeling (tundra, ice, cold, frozen) type of effects on textures which one might take with their camera?

Also, in that regards, how could one 'sandify' said textures if they wanted another effect?

I know alot of this has to do with layers and color changes (levels, hues, etc) and blending modes, but I was wondering what techniques do you guys usually use?

Cheers and ciao.

Mark Dygert

You can get a good start using a plane and a few modifiers. Also, the new substance materials have a decent sand texture, tag that with a modified plane then use RTT and projection to get a good start on the normal map. It's also fairly easy to make it tile.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1216404&postcount=4

Ace-Angel

Nice, thanks the link Mark, that is nifty.

Mark Dygert

Oh also 3D Motive has a great UDK Advanced material tutorial that shows you how to set up a blend material that factors in the height of a normal map, that way you can turn blend snow and sand tile materials onto other surfaces.

http://www.3dmotive.com/product-udk-mesh-paint

Ace-Angel

Well, that is uncanny...I created such a shader in SFX for Max a while ago for my final project, hence the reason I was asking for some tips on Snow/Sand shaders...

Are you a ninja?

Thanks, Mark, will look into it.