Alrighty! I'm working on ripply sand for this cd cover and i have to finish it this week. AGH! Out of urgency and the sudden busy-ness of my Lightwave partners on this project, i'm hurriedly working to create some sand in Bryce. I don't have Real World Bryce yet, otherwise i'd look there. (i know - maybe for xmas ) I'd love to hear any sand recipes or know of any good top-down rippling sand images. My current strategy: create or find a decent rippling sand texture. Use that as height info for a sand terrain and map the (or another) sand texture onto the terrain. I'm currently messing with the DTE, beginning with the Simple&Fast warped wood texture to get some decent rippling. I'm going through the phase options at the moment. I know it looks like wood - i'm not focusing on color at the moment. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

what you need is bump mapping.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=717187&Start=1&Artist=danamo&ByArtist=Yes

I've done some experimenting with this and I would be happy to share my sand recipes if this looks similar to what you are looking for. I also used a desert type sand in my pic "This Car will Never Fly Again" at the link.

draculaz - yeah, i will do the bump mapping after i've got the pattern right. danamo - that would be great! i'm looking for more variation in the ripples, but, yeah... that's the sort of thing i'm going for. Do tell!

this looks pretty crap compared to danamo's :^( searched for an aerial photo of desert sand, chopped a bit out, fixed the perspective, used the desaturated image as terrain, photo as texture. The colour isn't great, and both pics could have done with a bit more blurring. My excuse is it was a quickie.

how's this? I'm not set on the ripple pattern yet, but i think the texture's coming along. What do you think?

I think you need to raise the bump on your puzzle .mat, some of the shapes are missing.....0.02p

thanks. i noticed that myself. once the image is on there i'll see how much the lines interfere with the image and adjust accordingly. :)

there's actually a mat out there called 'rippling sand folds'..just don't remember where I got it..

Attached Link: http://munkh3ymagnet.nofrag.com/

Sorry, I was at work and had to get home to Bryce to explain this better. Start by doing a top view render of a good tiling sand dune texture(there are several types at Munkh3yMagnet)on a 2d square and increase the frequency several times.I usually use a square doc. size of either 512 or 1024 px. I then take the render into PS and convert it to a greyscale and give it a slight gaussian blur. I make a terrain with the same resolution as the doc. size and apply the "rounded dunes" terrain filter several times until I get a good shaped dune. I find it helps to apply gaussian edges to the terrain so that it is easier to blend several dunes together.

Then I import the render into the picture section of the terrain filter and blend the dune and the sand ripples together. You can apply smoothing and adjust the height to suit your taste. I wouldn't worry too much about obvious tiling cause you can always add a piece of brush, clump of grass, or a rock to disguise areas that look too uniform or similar. Let me know if you have any questions 'cause I'm not a great tut writer,lol. HTH Dan

Excactly what I was gonna say... This is definitely a project for the Terrain Editor. No amount of bum mapping will really bring out enugh detail to match your other elements, such as the puzzle... Now, if Bryce had displacement mapping, it would be different! Good luck, can't wait to see your finished product.

Thanks, yeah, i'm just working on the ripple pattern and then i'll get a terrain going. I'll check those textures, danamo!

Would this work for you Bigbadelf? Not sure where I picked this up at. It's a 640 X 480 JPEG.

Thanks Swade! In the least it's great reference material!! Woohoo!

Attached Link: Low Tide

This is my favourite beach tutorial. I've never been able to reproduce it exactly though, but still looks cool.