Canyon Wall

Preview of the final product

A desert canyon rock wall with a layer of sand on the more stable areas of the surface.

The Problem we wanted to solve

I wanted to get sand on the upper and slightly flatter surfaces of the rock wall textuer

The solution

Use the height map as a mask so the sand will appear in the whiter areas

Edit the Textures

After turning the images into textures and making them tileable, I brought them into Affinity Photo so that I could make edits to any of the texture maps that needed improvement.

Creating the Material

Bring in the textures and begin by multiplying and lerping them together. To create the sand layering effect, use the height map as a mask and attach it to a multiply with the VertexNormalWS, and plug it into the alpha. Use a clamp connected with a Scalar Parameter to adjust the sharpness of the sand on the wall. The Vector3Parameters are used to adjust the color of the materials.

Normal Setup

Duplicate the setup of the base color and replace the textures with normal maps. You do not need the Multiplay nodes with the color parameters attached.

Adjust the Texture Scale

In a comment box, add Texture Coordinates attached with a Multiply and a Scalar Parameter and have the output be a Name Reroute so that you can adjust the scale of the textures without causing to much clutter.

Add the Material Animations

In Affinity Photo, I made a noise and a pebble texture that were different shades of gray. Using a Panner node for the animations, I attached the image texture to the alpha of the Lerp, a Vector3Parameter in the B input for the color, and a Name Reroute of the base color into A. The pebble texture acts also as a mask. I then copied and pasted it below and replaced the pebbles with my noise texture. Both have a VertexNormalWS and a Name Reroute so they can be plugged into the World Position Offset and create a very subtle distortion.

Final Material Setup

Plug in the propper reroute nodes into the correct inputs, for the Base Color and the Normal, use a Lerp and leave the alpha input as it is.

Conclusion

Show a video of the final tool in action

gpatinki_M_05_ChoiceMaterial.mp4

Resources

Add links to the resources you utilized

Links

Link to Material Video Submission: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12dZNNNifHCGbtaEIf2Sg_Fb5rjSB_VFI/view?usp=sharing

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