Specialisation Project: Rock Formation

The aim of this project was to do a mini outdoor rock and planet environment, similar to the fish tanks shown in the reference.

The scene consists of 5 different types of rocks and 9 different grass and reed assets each and the ground, ideally I would have liked to have had a few additional plants to mix in, but I am quite happy with how the scene turned out.

Here are some of the reference images used for this project:

Rock formation reference images.

Rock formation reference images.

Rocks:

The rocks are all sculpted in ZBrush using dynamesh and ZRemesher to get the base shape. For each of the 5 rocks I tried to make them quite different from each other and I also tried to use a number of different methods of when sculpting them, so I wasn’t just doing the same thing for all 5 rocks.

Surface noise was used for this rock.

Surface noise was used for this rock.

 

Alphas were used to get the detail on this rock.

Alphas were used to get the detail on this rock.

 

This rocks detail was just about all done by hand with a little surface noise.

This rocks detail was just about all done by hand with a little surface noise.

 

Masked surface noise was used for this rock to get smoother and rougher areas.

Masked surface noise was used for this rock to get smoother and rougher areas.

 

Surface noise was used for this rock.

Surface noise was used for this rock.

 

Reeds & Grass:

The reeds and grass where also all done in ZBrush using FiberMesh, with the colour texture map being done with ZBrush polypaint FiberMesh brushes.

The grass in Zbrush poly painted.

The grass in Zbrush poly painted.

 

An initial attempt at reeds.

 

The initial colour style of the second reed type.

The initial colour style of the second reed type.

 

The final reeds polypaint.

The final reeds polypaint.

 

Layout:

The ground plane was simply sculpted using the Maya sculpting tools.

Import of assets into Maya.

Import of assets into Maya.

 

Trying out Maya Fur to act as an additional grass covering, which was later dropped as it looked unrealistic.

Trying out Maya Fur to act as an additional grass covering, which was later dropped as it looked unrealistic.

 

Rock formation scene layout in Maya.

Rock formation scene layout in Maya.

 

Feedback:

My teacher Heath suggested the use of Fur based grass as a way of lowering the manual placement requirements. Initially this looked promising, however I later realised that it way always pointing directly away from any surface it was on rather pointing/growing upwards like realistic grass would. I spent quite a lot of time reading up and looking for solutions on how to make this work correctly, but was unable to get a result I was happy with and after spending time making a good ground textures ultimately decided that the textures with additional manual rock, grass and reed placement looked far better in the end.

 

Final Look:

 

A frame of the rock formation final render.

A frame of the rock formation final render.

 

The final rendered scene.