Asteroid Material - Cycles

At the moment, I am trying to make some asteroids that will be featured in a (top-view) space shooter game ; These asteroids will be rendered and the resulting images will be used to texture flat mesh objects ; So no texture baking or UV unwrapping is necessary here.

After having read quite a few documents about asteroids in general, I must admit that it is a very fascinating subject ; I suppose one could spend a life time studying them !

An image of the asteroid 243 Ida :


For now, I am trying to determine a easy way to make a set of asteroids of different sizes, and that will all use the same procedural Material.

Would anyone have some ideas as to what could be improved ?

I find that the colors in the render (below) look very “washed out”…

A render using 250 render samples :


This is and has been a problem

all the guides and tutorials have one make basically a pumice lava rock in space

the above image is not bad the craters are TOO deep but other than that
not bad

i have been starting with making a DEM in simple cylindrical projection then importing that into a mesh
things like

http://8.t.imgbox.com/0BFkVXKb.jpg http://4.t.imgbox.com/06ZkhB7Y.jpg

or a different one rendered

http://0.t.imgbox.com/2SvGzMaq.jpg http://6.t.imgbox.com/ypBAIatF.jpg

and some real life small bodies ( very low polly )
http://forum.celestialmatters.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=636

but
a simple way of making something that looks like
Ceres
http://4.t.imgbox.com/aSHILNQm.jpg http://7.t.imgbox.com/UbumTW9u.jpg
or Vesta

http://t.imgbox.com/zRGcwJEZ.jpg http://t.imgbox.com/1FnnDroc.jpg

i am still working on that one , and a bit stuck also

As to color

there really IS NONE!!!
Ceres is dark a very dark gray with a slight brown ( sunlight color mostly)
comet 67p is almost BLACK

ida is really mostly gray with just a light tint of color (also sunlight color mostly)
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00330

Bear in mind that the colours in the asteroid photo you have posted are enhanced and/or false - designed to highlight detail and/or different mineral compositions.

Too add some variation in brightness however - you could throw the new pointiness attribute into the mix.


Thanks for the help everyone.
The big craters are now less deep than before and I added a pointiness node to the asteroid Material.
Today I will try changing the lighting and the vertex colors, as to see if any improvements can be made.

A render with 250 samples :


looking good

Tried changing a few things around today ; Here is an updated version of the asteroid :

Asteroid-Cycles-Test-Final.blend (2.23 MB)

Or you can download an alternative version here :

Here is a short video that shows how to make an asteroid using the download :

A render with 250 samples :


A close up render :