Technical or artistic direction: Ground meets wall

Tokamak · February 7, 2018, 5:26pm

I’m not sure which board to put this in. I THINK this is the right one, but it might belong in texturing.

I’m not looking for detailed hand-holding, but nudges in the right direction, technically OR artistically.

So, lately I’ve been trying to improve my texturing skills, so I’ve been learning to use Substance Painter and Designer in conjunction with Blender. As an exercise, I took an existing free model, redid the UV mapping in Blender, textured with Substance Painter, and then went back to Blender work it into a simple scene and render in Cycles. (The ivy is from IvyGen)

I’m reasonably happy with most of it. The ground is… okay for something that won’t be the focus. However, the area where the ground meets the wall is distractingly bad. Obviously a little AO shading wouldn’t hurt, but other than that, I’m not sure what to do.

Obviously those two surfaces wouldn’t really meet at a perfect intersection like that. I’ve looked at the real thing and reference photos, and frankly I’m not sure how to make it look reasonable, short of doing a large amount of high-poly sculpting right where they join. Or perhaps I should approach it entirely with textures/normal maps/displacement?

I’m not sure what direction to even go in. I’d love a bit of advice. Thanks!

For reference, this is the model I started with.

Here is my render.

This angle doesn’t really show it, but I have made sure already that the ground surface isn’t totally flat.

GrimZA · February 8, 2018, 7:44am

There should be a small but noticeable incline between a wall and ground.

Example: Notice the small incline.

vs a maintained yard.

Not really the same thing but you get the idea.

dgorsman · February 8, 2018, 11:26am

Would someone be through there on a regular basis with a weedwhacker? If not, then there will be a bit of extra growth around the base, and along with that a bit of trapped dirt and organic debris.

Lane · February 8, 2018, 12:12pm

Why dont add some grass here and there, and specially on the part between wall and floor ? ( even grass free addon should be enough good ).

Your floor is too, flat, missing normal or displacement, so adding some volume with grass ( keep the texture you have allready for the “plane”… ) should allready help a lot.

https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?398505-Grass-Free

Tokamak · February 9, 2018, 9:08pm

Thanks everyone. While more tweaking is needed, that advice helped a lot. And I can highly recommend Grass Free (linked above) to anyone reading this.

A super quick low quality render:

Felix_Kutt · February 11, 2018, 4:40am

Yup, definitely could add a little bit of moss there.