SterlingY
October 20, 2015, 10:41pm
18
Nearly all of the visual “oomph” is pushed by the textures, which is a special blend of 3 different detail levels - a standard resolution tiling rock texture, which fades to a larger tiling version of the same texture at a distance to reduce tiling. Up close there’s a tiling detail texture to give it some up-close resolution. The far distance texture’s normal also still applies at a faded intensity up close, so you don’t have the overall shading suddenly changing as you get closer to it - but you need to make sure the normal isn’t too powerful or it will cause significant black shading spots caused by the mega huge tiling texture. World space textures are critically important to push this specific material, without that everything would fail. Beyond that, it all comes down to just having the right diffuse texture. Having strong vertical and horizontal elements, such as the cracks, help to sell the layered look especially with the world space textures.
That’s about all I can think of off the top of my head - if there’s something specific you’d like to know about, I’d be happy to provide some additional details.
Thank you! That’s great information. I’ll try to play around with the concepts you mentioned. I’m sure you’re slammed, but if you did a tutorial on the subject, I’m sure a lot of people could benefit. Materials, at least for me, are one of those areas where I’m overwhelmed. I tend to cringe and focus on other areas.
-Sterling