Creating decent rock textures - Help please

[JamesL]

Hey guys and girls ... wait, who am I kidding ...

Guys, I am looking for some advice, help, links or whatever to help me in the creation of some really good quality rock textures.

Now I have done a fair bit if searching and experimentation myself, and have tried the render diffuse clouds and spotlight technique suggested in various tutorials to moderate success. I have also tried working from a variety of rock photos working at layering different parts of different rock pictures together as desaturated overlay layers to create a composite texture.

However most of my results come out at best as average. I don't seem to be able to make nice textures with lots of detail that can tile, without them showing up horrible tiling patterns.

I find, to my frustration, that working the tiling out of the textures, tends to homogonise the whole thing and I lose all the detail. Likewise trying to work variation and detail back into the texture seems to just bring back the horrible tiling. Its annoying since pretty much anything else I seem to be able to tile decently enough, offset filter, clone and heal brush stylee, but rock ... just doesn't seem to work.

Looking at the rock textures in EP2 and the kind of stuff artists here like Phil K have turned out, I think I am missing some vital aspect of the creation process and or I am just plain doing it wrong.

Whilst I am no artist, and don't hope to suddenly miraculously create amazing texture work by clicking a few filters, I am hopeful that you guys can give me some advice and pointers to help me improve the crap I am currently turning out. I am pretty proficient with Photoshop technically, and have been able to turn out a variety of reasonable textures, but rock, god damn it, I just don't seem to be able to get looking good.

Any tips, pointers or advice would be really appreciated.

[Pericolos0]

Rock textures usually tend to be pretty tiling since they usually contain some big shapes and details, i wouldn't be too worried about having it looking a bit tiling, it's more important to make the geometry of the rocks look nice so the tiling isn't that apparent.

Anyways, it all takes practice, and layering photos+offsetting and clone brush is the basic start for a diffuse rock texture :/. try to look at a lot of rock textures and figure out what it is that makes them look good, I can't really think of any rule set for it.

[JamesL]

Yeah I know what you are saying Peris, and I have played around with this a fair bit trying to improve, but still, I find myself just banging my head against a brick wall with it. Perhaps I'll post up some stuff I have made and you guys can suggest some improvements. That's might be a good way to go.

[clayman]

have a nice normalmap for it, tiling can allways be solved with geometry =)

[dissonance]

http://cgtextures.com/content.php?action=tut_normalmap

[JamesL]

Interesting tutorial Dissonance. Thanks.

[Sindwiller]

/me dies because of awesomness

I'm going to try that tomorrow

[Warby]

i find making rock textures and models to be some of the hardest stuff thats out therein game development the bottom 3 models there ar ebreathtakingly good the top one the huge tutorial is rather MEH

[zaphod]

whats FMP? Those are the prettiest rocks I have ever seen!

*edit* n/m found it in thread http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.ph ... ain=205617

[Sa74n]

here's some more pictures that might help you get on the right track:

this looks a bit crappy but shows the basic approach when you want to sculpt cliffs.

theres some nice technical trickery to get sharp edges onto rock cliffs like chamfering edges on a "messy" rock model (like shown here http://www.valent.us/tutorial/RockwallGiantTut.jpg ) or using flatten in your sculpting package of choice.

it all comes down to you knowing what type of rock you want and how its gonna be used ingame.

[Method]

If you don't like to model, then why not use photo reference and blend more images on top untill you're happy. How about these ones:

http://www.cgtextures.com/textures.php?t=more&q=11667

Then follow the tutorial that has been posted here already:

http://cgtextures.com/content.php?action=tut_normalmap

Edit: Fixed typo.

-Method

[JamesL]

Fantastic stuff guys. That thread on Polycount is excellent stuff and I am def going to have a go at modelling myself up a few rocks. Thx for those tuts too Method, I'll be giving them a go.

[Minos]

wow nice finds sa74n