Creating a giant rock cliff?

jordank95 · May 2018

Working on sculpting a giant cliff and wondering what the typical workflow for something this large is?

what I plan on doing is sculpting out a high poly in Zbrush, decimating to get a low poly version, then baking in Substance Painter to get my normal maps. Then using a tiling texture in UE4 in conjunction with the baked normal map.

Since the cliff is so large, should I be using a 4K normal map for this? I have it split into two parts since I was worried the normal detail would be too low res.

Is this an acceptable workflow? Any other tips?

Obscura · May 2018

Yes. You probably won't need a 4k baked normal though, as it should only hold large/medium size details, and the smaller details would come from the tiling normal maps.

jordank95 · May 2018

Obscura said:

Yes. You probably won't need a 4k baked normal though, as it should only hold large/medium size details, and the smaller details would come from the tiling normal maps.

Ok great. Thanks for the info.

Another question - what’s the best method to set this up in UE4? Can’t seem to find a tutorial.

jordank95 · May 2018

Ah Nevermind. Spoke too soon. Figured it out myself. Just used a blend material to blend the baked normal with a material function tiling stone material.

Obscura · May 2018

or even simpler, use the blend angle corrected normals node.

musashidan · May 2018

Another method is to create 3 or 4 unique rock elements with tiling detail maps and mash them together to form the cliff. You can get some really natural looking formations like that.

Some very useful tips in this one as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MhptO3Bam0&list=PLUcdb83t0I4tOrdKMCajS1me1jPEncbRq&index=10

Creating a giant rock cliff?

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