Generated Desert Sand

 Idea for generating windblown sand texture in Blender, and Unreal Engine.

I saw some nice sand patterns from a desert photo and it reminded me of the weird type of patterns the Blender Musgrave texture generates. After some experimentation, the results were actually pretty decent. Here are some examples of the setup.

The Musgrave textures are stretched out run, through ramps and blended together, then a Voronoi is used to make variations in the strength of some of the peaks. The Musgraves are also rotated around at different angles, because they tend to reveal repeating lines with larger scale values.

This technique might also help generate some interesting textures to use for panning water normals.

using several blended Musgrave textures input
into a bump, and into normals for baking.
Output Normal map, and Heightmap.
Tweaked to make seamless in Krita.

Shader setup on a plane in UE4

Simple UE4 shader with added color,
and heightmap to modulate roughness.
Blended the normal map with a seamless noise normal
to add some fine grains.

Download Texture Images

Brick Wall mesh and texture

Source photo from old schoolhouse

X tiling texture made with Krita

Materials applied and arranged in UE4

 

Humanoid Pupae: Sculpting

 

Original Sketch for creature

Sculpt concept 1 - eyes open

3D Printed Miniatures

25mm 3D Prints

lg and small w/teeth diorama

Apothecary Cabinet - Blender Materials

Shader network

Material for hammered metal handle

 

Metal Bars Procedural Mesh and Materials

 

Panoramic texture capture

 Experiments with using panoramic mode to capture surface textures.

flat ground textures can be scanned using this mode. also cylindrical objects like trees, barrels, or pillars. The difficulty is getting a smooth continuous scan. hand-held auto stabilization is poor overall. it would be better to user a cam-rig of some type, or roller wheel.

Fountain cobblestone
(captured about half way around the ring)

tree unwrap

Long terrain scan

wild garden area

Toy tractor paint aging

Started with this 1:50 scale diecast, John Deere 744H front loader from around 2002 (Ertl 5085). Not as believable with perfectly even shiny paint, and not a speck of dirt on it. The texturing process will use acrylic craft paint, this way it could be applied and removed, if desired, without damaging the original model.

Aged using matte acrylic craft paint. Bucket with Semple black. entire body was repainted with matte yellow and aged through various wash layering passes. then edge highlights with silver metallic.

tires fully painted with matte black, washed and dusted with sifted concrete. 
(wheel rims not yet completed.)

layering of paint for mud, rust, dust, occlusion, paint fading, & metallic abrasions.

Stone Guardian: blender sculpting

Stone Guardian

Work in progress: starting to shape finer details

Textures applied, next to brick walls

Updating: Rewrapped UV,
Painting in detail heightmap.

Blender Noise synthesis Materials

 A few experiments using noise and patterns to generate, non-repeating materials. It is nice for prototyping the surface qualities, and can be baked down into various surface bitmaps.

Geoblocks with some ideas for metal, wood, and stone.
DOWNLOAD SAMPLE BLEND FILE

generated rusty metal surface

Industrial Stairs with variable paint rust.

Simple fabric based on noise and checker.

Brick generator: group nodes to contain color mixers

Cat Climber Materials. Carpet, wood, rope

rough sisal rope mixture

Stone sculpture:
3 different procedural texture variations

Zen garden sculpture:
reference and shader overview

Blender: Height map based mesh displacement

Demonstration of creating a mesh with depth and complexity using an image based height map

Mesh displacement + height generated normal map

Shader setup using only one texture sample
The right side shows the modifier setup.

original modifier subdivision vs modifier decimated

XY Array modifier to test for seams

UE4: Lighting mini-blinds

Mini-blinds with lined shadows

Objects in scene are painted with the shadows
from the light function

Blueprint class with plane object and lights built in.
contains a non-shadowing point light, and shadow casting spotlight
which has the light function defined.

 

The blinds photo is added and set to give emissive light,
there is also a normal map I was testing, more useful when
not emitting light.

The spotlight near the blinds has a special material
 added as a "light function". This makes the lines masked out.