I’ve posted this scene before (it started as a weekend challenge, but I just can’t let go of it). Since Andrew Price introduced the on-demand subscription model at Polligon, I decided to make use, and I have to say, his pebbles are an order of magnitude better than mine.
I have two lighting setups, day and night. Whilst the day set up isn’t bad, the night one is giving me some issues (hence WIP).
Basically, the larger stones are a particle system. There are 8 models of varying sizes. The texture is set up to vary the mapping on each. This is all working.
However, part of the light setup is a sun (in the night scene it’s a moon), using the sun lamp. In the render below, I had to turn off “seen by glossy”, otherwise there are very prominent hotspots, that de-noising ignores. In the day render version, the effect is far less noticiable (though I think it’s there).
The problem with not being seen by glossy is it flattens the whole image.
Increasing roughness doesn’t help. Some of the larger stones use a normal map, and some use micro-polygon displacement. If they all used the same, I could narrow it down.
I can’t post a scene. It seems to be restricted to these textures, which are, of course, paid for, so hoping someone can figure it out from my description.
To aid, a small region render without the adjustment to the moon also below. And for good measure, the daylight render.
Night:
Night with hotspots: Note, the hotspots aren’t restricted to the larger stones. They appear on the small, displacement pebbles, to0:
Day: