I made this project in 4 weeks...
The idea was... Level designer can create block outs in their 3D program of choice and then import and generate a baked low poly with a lot of details.
Focus on user control and with the ability easily create different variations of the model.
i researched...
I planned...
I used references...
Lorem
Erosion VDB noise
Rock shape VDB noise
Surface VDB noise
To reach a noise that can loos like erosion or shape i blended a variety of different noises with a VDB vop.
I also passed a seperate VDB attribute from a mask generated from the normals up direction to behave differently based on the user input. Rock formations in nature are affected by weather conditions such as rain, wind and more. I imagine the top of my rockformation has been smoothed over 100s of years while the interior is more rough since it has been more protected from the elements.
Masks and bake
I created masks using the curvature, AO & Noise on the model to then add vertex colors from user Input.
One problem with using vertex color and bake them to a texture is ofcourse is that now that the mesh needs alot of geometry or the textures will not look good at all, a better solution here would probably be to generate textures from houdini COPS. Another way to do this would be to bake relevant masks and set up some smart materials in other software like substance painter.
Base
Curvature
Cravices
Dust
Finally a lowpoly is generated from the high poly and the details are baked down here. unfortunately as time was limited for this project, i chose not to spend to much time implementing a great system for this. result is ok but if i had more time i would spend more time on this area since some of the shape/outline of the lowpoly is lost, maybe i could pin areas while doing the remesh with a mix of masks I generatedearlier but i would have to do more research in this area in the future.
Reflection
