terrain4print

The arsenal is extended with another tool

Added 2020-01-08 14:23:30 +0000 UTC

Be warned, there is a bit of technical terms in this text. If you are not into 3D graphics just look at the result.

I am a blender user since ten years. I started out with 3D studio R4 (in Dos) some 25 years ago. I have since then used 3D studio max, Rhino, Wings3D and a tiny bit of sketchup before climbing the hurdle and learned blender. It was quite a hurdle but it was worth it. Now with the big release 2.80 it is much easier to get into and has so much to offer.

But as I am not modeling for rendering, I have been a bit limited with displacement as Blenders node setup can't be used directly for displacements maps. Displacement is the art of applying a texture (procedural or bitmap) to a flat mesh, giving it a pattern.

Enter Substance Designer

I wanted to do rock modeling like this guy:

https://www.artstation.com/dete

Among the weird stuff like spaghetti with meatballs and parasitic skin tissue you can find lots of fantastic rock textured.

All of them are procedurally generated. Changing the random seed will give you a different version of the same look. Sort of like moving a looking a loupe over a surface.

The result is texture bitmaps, including height. All bitmaps are tiling so they can be wrapped around.

So I generate my texture using the node setup in Substance Designer screenshot above. The texture is used in Blender. I create a bunch of copies to get variation. The copies have their UV-coordinates translated (remember, the texture tiles so there are no seams). Each mesh is very dense to get the most of the details from the texture. But Decimate brings it back down and keeping the details.

Now I have a bunch of stamps that can be used to spice up an Ulvheim piece, like this: