Procedural Sand

**Javier Pintor** · 06-15-2010, 06:30 PM

Hello.

I made a house model and I want to place it in a beach environment, near my home I have the Artola dunes reference, so probably tomorrow I will go to take some pictures of trees, bushes, sand, rocks and water...

This is the sand tests I've done for now... I would apreciate some help or tips.

Thank you.

Javi.

**Advertisement** · 06-15-2010 06:30 PM

**annkos** · 06-16-2010, 01:09 PM

Great sand Javier! My only comment is that looks like desert sand than beach sand.

**isucur** · 06-17-2010, 04:51 PM

Excellent stuff Javier, nice blending with environmental lighting for this dune sand.. Is it procedural or you made some tricks with displacement/bump..?

Cheers
Ivo

**Javier Pintor** · 06-18-2010, 06:35 AM

Thank you annkos. may you are right but I found it quite similar to the sand we've got here (I attached a photo) Thank you.

Thank you Ivo. The shapes are done by mixing procedural noise maps and applied to a vraydisp mod, diffuse is done by using a fallof containing 4 noise maps mixed and for the bump I used a speckle map.

Javi.

**bakbek** · 06-18-2010, 08:52 AM

Cool stuff! I like the result but I think you are missing some levels of detail in your sand. I think adding a second noise / displace with more fine random detail will be a good thing... also, the noise level in your material is too uniform - in the reference photo i can see the the top parts have much more fine sand the the lows and also lighter in color. Might be good to try this variation in your material scheme too.

Adding some small stones here and there randomly will make it even more real...

Keep posting! I like this very much :-)

**isucur** · 06-18-2010, 10:45 AM

Thanks Javier for the answer and thanks for starting this thread, because considering sand as an object of a large scale exterior i had no chance for exploring similar techniques so your workflow seems to be challenging and inspirational one..

Looking forward to see some further progress shots..

**blowback** · 06-19-2010, 11:28 PM

whoa. your sand is looking good. more please

**Javier Pintor** · 06-20-2010, 08:02 PM

Thanks for the reply guys!

Nice ideas Ronen, I wanna check how the material respond in bigger environments and I found that needs to be adjusted depending on the situation. Later on as you said I will check some small details as stones or wood cracks.

You're welcome Ivo, I hope this thread can help you aswel

Thanks you blowback!

Ok here I've done some more test renders with different measures, in the first two renders the displacement is applied to a 50x50m plane with modeled beach like dunes to check the blending of color, bump and disp between the high and low parts. The third one (I dont like it) is a 500x500m plane just to check how the disp blends with the distance.

Thanks.
Javi.

**Javier Pintor** · 06-20-2010, 08:14 PM

small material breakdown

**Javier Pintor** · 06-20-2010, 09:40 PM

Hello again.

I already made a test with the house model and some grass spread out, the first one is with no displacement and second one with it. Renders are straight out from max. Hope you like the progress.

Next week I'll be out of my country so for instance a little bit AFK.

Chears.
Javi.

**peterguthrie** · 06-21-2010, 07:42 AM

Looks great Javier!

I could have done with some really good sand like yours on my sail house project: Sail House I spent a bit of time on the displacement as well but unfortunately all the detail kind of disappeared on the final renders!