Day 37

I've tried adding another layer of veins onto the rock.

Here's an update on the latest height map version.

Day 36

There were some problems I had today as the rock generation turned out pretty... "organic", which looked really horrible. (very suggestive too)

Thanks to Mr Pang and Mr Ron we've figured out ways to beautify the rock and add a couple of more rocky features to the geometry.

1) Tweak and play around with worley offset and scale, vein frequency and spacing etc.

2) Use a buldge node to "buldge" a cube or any kind of primitive (not forgetting connecting it to metaball) sticking it out of the base geometry as shown in the last two screenshots below.

Day 35

Today I've edited the heightmap once again and applied the vopsop rock generation to a rock base geometry I've worked on previously. I have to tweak the vopsop attributes when I apply it onto a more complex base geometry instead of a randomnised normals box.

more screenshots will be uploaded soon.

Day 33

Continuation of rock generator tests.

I played around with most of the patterns, applied layers of noise and tried it on a bigger scale geometry.

I'm also adding a couple of extra parameters for the generator such as frequency, scale etc.

I've also tried another method of subdividing and implementing it with vopsop.

Day 32

Today I've re-created my own rock generator with reference from a couple of files.

WIP screenshots:

Day 31

Today Mr Ron helped me understand more about vopsop. How to apply patterns and what nodes to use to connect them, s and t coordinates.

With that in mind we added pores to the rocks using softdots.

With the help of a previous file I've downloaded from odforce.net I'll implement cracks on to the surface of the rock I'm working on.

 Day 30

An odforce user provided me with a link to a thread which was very useful. It involved using a complex vopsop to generate a boulder although I can't really define a shape I desire but rather depend on the worleynoise randomising the shape.

I'm still exploring vopsop, it's uses and how it should be used. I'm still not familiar with vopsop and I'm having much difficulties understanding it. I need to find tutorials which can help me understand the usage of vopsop. I've scanned through the list of Peter Quint's videos but I can't seem to find any, perhaps I missed it?

Day 29

Mr Douglas taught me how to play around with the exponents in the metaball today. They help create a more solid look instead of a bubbly one.

Also there are other ways of pulling up the top of the metaball geometry by using a metaball magnet as shown in here.

With help from people in odforce, they've helped me come up with the idea of using vop sop voronoise to sharpen the metaball rock geometries I already have.

Here's the link to a good thread on procedural rock modelling:
http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?/topic/10798-procedural-stonesrocks/page__hl__rocks

Day 28

I've experimented fixing the metaball generated rock structure onto the height map terrain. I'm also still modelling the foreground rock structures.

Day 27

I've re-created my own version of the scene Mr Douglas came up with.

I now fully understand how the rocks can be procedurally created. Here are some results by tweaking the scale expression, step size and point jitter to get the shape I want for the rock structure.

The resolution can easily be changed in the amount of step size.

After getting comfortable with the scene I recreated the "rig" for the rock structure and bent it to get an arc shape.

Day 26

I've started modelling the foreground extruded rocks in maya. The modelling process has been going well so far. I'll update with screenshots soon.

Day 24

There are a couple of new things I've found out about, hopefully it can be of use to the scene. Firstly on Wednesday I've finally gotten a reply on odforce regarding interaction between geometries and flip fluids. (Flood breaking rock structures)

Terragen 2 is very easy to use. Here's a test render I came up with.

I've been having some difficulties painting the height map to get a decent base I want so that I can start modeling the foreground rocks as seen in the reference provided by Mr Douglas. I'm close to getting it though.

Mr Douglas helped me create a procedurally modelled rock using metaballs and rig joints to deform a box.

In Mr Douglas' previous test file he used a magnet to deform the metaballs. However in the new file he created I still don't quite understand what has been done thus, I shall ask.

...

I've asked Mr Douglas and he has explained how the file works. Now I know which nodes to tweak and put them into a control for easy transformations of the metaball.

I've also "finalised" the height map so that I can use it as the base for the rock modelling in maya. Mr Douglas approves of me using maya to model the rock structures in the foreground since their details are much more noticable closer to the camera. The rest of the random rock structures in the background can be created procedurally.