I'm curious if anyone has had much success at creating Bryce materials representing weathered and stained concrete and asphalt?

Specifically... I'm trying to create concrete and asphalt materials for the road and sidewalk in the image above.

There needs to be oil and dirt stains on the asphalt and misc. dirt, stains, and gum, etc. on the side walk.

Although I plan to add some of this weathering and dirt with Photoshop... I thought it would be neat to first create as much of it as I could in Bryce. I haven't had much success yet though. The best thing to do, I suppose, would have been to create a texture map and to apply it in Bryce. I was curious to see just how close I could get without relying on a texture map, though.

This might be asking alot, but does anyone have any suggestions? :-)

You can use a marble in the diffusion, ambience or both value field. Then apply a cloud texture to that channel and you'll light and dark areas. Maybe a screenshot of the materials you have already and I could give you specifics. If you aren't that familiar with the DTElet me know and I'll go into more depth in how to achieve this. The other alternative is to paint a texture in photoshop and apply it or get a photo texture of concrete and apply that (the web is full of texture if you search on google).

Sir Alan, you can do ALL of your texturing inside of Bryce, if you wish. Photoshop rules, but if you want to try and keep it all native, here's some tips! 1. Multi-channel textures. You can use several components, both inside the DTE and in the Materials Lab itself. This is just basic experimentation, and could take years to master... 2. Take any or all of your primitives (mostly cubes in the example image you posted). Duplicate them, and set the duplicates to a different family so you can keep them separate. Now, on your new "dupes", create a new material. This will be your dirt layer. Make each "dupe" only slightly bigger than it's original, I mean single .1 increments bigger. Now go into your materials, grab a Blend Transparency cloud or similar Mat, and tweak it until you have dirt! I used this technique on an test image, it's dirty but here ya go! Almost ALL of the objects in this scene have dirty duplicates. Just an idea for you to try!

Thanks for the quick response Aldaron. I will try your advice. I've already been doing almost exactly the same thing you suggest. I just haven't been happy with the results yet. I have been playing with using marble settings with cloud textures. I've also been playing with photo textures I've created in Photoshop. I have yet to see an appropriate photo texture for what I want to do unfortunately. I didn't really think I would, though. I will try and post some of my results thus far as soon as I can. As for my familiarity with the DTE... I'm niether a newbie or an advanced user. I fall somewhere in the middle. :-) Thanks again.

Thanks Shadowdragonlord! I knew there was something simple and obvious I was overlooking. I remember reading about the second technique you mentioned before, but it completely slipped my mind. The first technique is the one I've been messing with.

Oh, when I said... "I have yet to see an appropriate photo texture for what I want to do unfortunately. I didn't really think I would, though." I ment that I haven't seen an appropriate photo texture on the web for download. I've looked extensively. :-)

Attached Link: http://art.net/~jeremy/photo/public_texture/index.html

Well...here are some I have used off the net. I typically pull them into photoshop then use the stamping tool to create a bigger version. These are all probably 800 X 800 or larger on the site. Complete with link.

Sir? If someone has knighted me then they haven't told me about it. No need to be so formal. lol 8D A little information about my image above... The tree, grass, dirt chunks, and stones are all Bryce objects. All other objects were created in Rhino and imported into Bryce. All the materials applied in the image are Bryce materials I created specifically for this image. So... I'm having some success with the Materials Lab and the DTE. :-) No photo textures used yet.

DOH!!!!

Image

Hey Claymor... I thought that first image was a little dark. Thanks

Attached Link: http://www.dvgarage.com/garage/a2d/tut/tutpast/tutpast_view/tutpast_view.php?tutdate=01_04_11&rende

Some of the best CG tuts around...Here's one on a parking lot. http://www.dvgarage.com/garage/a2d/tut/tutpast/tutpast_view/tutpast_view.php?tutdate=01_04_11&renders=0&projectfiles=no

Thanks Stephen Ray. I missed that tut. I've seen some of their others. By any chance, have your ever attended any of the DVGarage meetings. I live just near enough to attend, but haven't yet, and was curious about them. In all likely-hood you probably live far from where they are located. Just seems to be the way things work out, but I thought I'd ask. :-)

If I'm not mistaken there in San Francisco... yup I'm far away, on the other side of the country, Sarasota Fla.

Attached Link: My asphalt

From in front of my house.

Thanks for the texture, Groingrinder! Here's a couple examples of the aforementioned #2 method, contrasted with just a straight aliased render of Groin's texture. Both the plane and the cube use his texture, which I might add tiled wonderfully (woo hoo!). The cube has a separate, only slightly bigger cube driving a Blend Transparency material made with the DTE. If I turned down the spec. a bit, it would look more like oil I guess... Using this separate cube, one can adjust the "scale" or noise of the oil/dirt to fit the scale of the scene. I had some difficulties adjusting the scale of the photo-based texture...

Shouldn't that be a plural, Groingrinder? As in...Your Assesphalt? Sorry, couldn't resist...maybe I should just go to bed.. :)