Decomposed Granite

[Frutiger]

Anyone have any ideas on how to convincingly render decomposed granite, or any gravel-like substance? I haven't been able to think of anything very clever yet.

[Meelis]

You can make seamless decomposed granite texture.

Then in blender use that texture to create heightmap = thats 3d geometry from image.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D ... heightmaps

And finally look if that model can be instanced, clean it if it needs.

I made heightmap from photo on that old render.
http://static2.nagi.ee/i/p/513/10/128275274335be_o.jpg

[galinette]

Do you have a picture of this? I do not know what this looks like

Etienne

[Frutiger]

Sure Galinette, here's a picture of some decomposed granite. It's essentially granite that's been pounded and mashed so that it has a range of fineness to it. Some of it's dust and some of it's small rocks.

Decomposed Granite Example

So, it sounds like you're recommending that I make a seamless texture of some of this DG stuff and then make a displacement map, Meelis? Or would a displacement map take up too many resources while rendering?

Here's some context for where I'm going to put it. On the far right, you'll see a really bad tiled dirt texture. That's what I need to model.

Context

[Meelis]

I'm not shure if displacement map will be instanced like texture is repeated.
But if u create 3d geometry and instance it yourself.

Maybe even only texture does the job.