How to make a beautyfull rock textiure or shader ?
I’m trying since 1 month to make something really realistic and nothing.
Do you got some tips to help me a little ?
hi, the main thing to remember is to keep the spec way down, and a bump map ( a texture set to ‘nor’ instead of ‘col’ ) can be a good idea. also keep the hardness down, and use the oren nayer shader. musgrave texture works well for such things, and a noise texture or 2 or 3 can be good on rocks too. also change the mapping from flat to cube. of course as with most things, the real way to go is UV mapping. that way you can make it look EXACTly how you want it. if you’re not familiar with UV mapping and you want to try it, you can try my tutorials.
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Hello [email protected],
Try the Musgrave texture mapped to Norm or Disp. You Could also add a marble texture to give variations in colour. If you want variation in bump mapping on your rock you can use any other texture, such as marble, in a low texture slot and set to stencil. Higher number textures will only apply to the light areas of the stencil texture.
I created this in a few minutes and here is the blend file. Explore and modifiy to your needs.
http://www.cogfilms.com/tutorials/rock.blend
Cog
Hi Modron
In actual fact if you use procedural textures, such as Musgrave, flat mapping works just fine as these textures exist in all three directions X, Y and Z. So they are different from a projected flat image such as a UV map.
If you look at the simple pebble example I created in my previous post the material is flat mapped to the mesh (In actual fact they are Meta objects) but the textures flow through the shape. Its one of the neat things, I believe, about procedurals.
Cog
I usually give it a small wild marble texture and a noisy cloud texture, can give good results.
thank you guys !!!
but i can’t make it %|
i am neird i believe 
Download the sample blend file from the above post and study the material and texture settings. You can even append the rock into your own blend file and make changes. Alot of learning Blender is trial and error. You have to get used to the interface … that’s usually the hardest part.
Hi again [email protected]_,
Here’s another example based on a rock texture I’m developing for my feature.
Here is the blend file. Experiment, change, mess with, and enjoy.
Cog
thanks cog !!!
this is the final result i want : http://homepage.ntlworld.com/davey.ball/Render/Images/HouseTB.jpg
i find that … errr … WOW !!!
Ok I’ve had a look at Davey Ball’s pictures and I’m pretty sure that these are images, photographs, mapped to meshes. I suspect that the original images were used as background viewport images to help create the mesh shape. You should email him and ask.
You could attempt such a texture using procedurals in Blender. Just examine the rock colours and textures then use similar techniques in the 2 blend files I have given to achieve the colour and texture.
A good way to examine the 2 examples given is to open the texture tab in the material area.
You can turn on and off any texture by clicking the tick box. Then press F12 to render to see how each adds to the overall texture. Sometimes when I am working on a texture I will discard some texture after trying them. It’s a very creative process. Occasionally I will accidentally come up with a particular texture that I can see would be valuable in other projects. I always note these down for latter use.
I’ve had another go at the sea rock example with a round edged box and ambient occlusion. The texture is unchanged from the previous example though.
Enjoy
Cog
that’s a fantastic see rock material u got there :o
here is the method is uses for the rocks :
The rocks were made using 2 disp maps (1 being the new Musgarve type) and one image texture only. Links to the 2 images below…
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/davey.ball/Renderings/divrock2-dispmap.jpg
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/davey.ball/Renderings/divrock2.jpg ~1Mb
thanks for your help cog
That’s a good rock map. Had to have a go using my procedural example.
The only problem is that it took several hours to render!
Cog
yeep cause blender is not reyes based. with reyes those true displacments would render darn fast. grrrr
but i saw some experimental work here where the displacement with a low value was used to animate randomly the character mesh, that looked kick ass.
i love displacments they are kinda like the finishing touch
claas
i love displacments they are kinda like the finishing touch
it needs to be well done because if not …
it’s more like something “unfinished” 
Added a little more weathering.
Cog
we need to see it on something more “rocky” now 