"Hello, this is Trent Trazzledorf reporting to you from the recently discovered 'Tunnels of Arcturus'. Although these tunnels were discovered almost two years ago and have been the subject of intense examination by leading archeologists, they estimate that they've only mapped perhaps ten percent or so of the complete tunnel complex. The site where i'm standing is where, this morning, several workers found the object that has shocked, puzzled and concerned the archeologists all day...." Tomorrow morning i hit the road, moving from North Carolina back to Northern California. NC to NC. I wanted to throw this image up and ask one question before i leave, though: What do you think of the texture of the detritus? I can't quite put my finger on why it's not quite working for me. It's got me stumped. Of course, any other comments are also welcome.

I have no idea why it doesn't work for you. It works for me! I think it's just fine. :o) Good work!

The textures are fantastic, what I see that bothers me is the transition between the wall and the floor seems to sharp. Love those stones wish I could get some for my yard. I'm not too familiar with caves so I don't know what real ones look like at the wall bases. I agree with eelie, I think this is looking great.

I had to rush to the dictionary to look up the word detritus ! Looks great. Good luck with the move,......be careful, be safe.

"Any club that would have me as a member is probably not worth joining" -Groucho Marx

Thanks, sackrat. And thanks all for the comments. I'll have to fix that floor/wall line after i get the new walls in place, but thanks for pointing it out, Ang. It's nice to know that it's what's standing out most. 8o)

hmm..leaving our fair state, eh? no red clay there, no 'pig in a blender' barbecue, but the taxes are higher..ah..sounds like fun..enjoy..;)

I wish I'd said that.. The Staircase Wit

anahl nathrak uth vas betude doth yel dyenvey..;)

As this WIP gets further along are we going to get to see the "object that has shocked, puzzled and concerned the archeologists"? My curiosity is UP!

I think it looks great. I do agree that the transition from wall to floor is a bit sharp. The textures are great though. It's coming along really well! Keep it up. And welcome home to Nor CA ;)

~Damia~ LeviathanPhotography

Two things I can think of... One thing is that the grit seems a bit "too clean". I would expect to see some difference in size:

• small rocks - a few somewhat bigger rocks - perhaps a large boulder
  If you use a terain for the grit (wich I suspect you do)then you could perhaps do it by adding random "blobs" that you erode silghtly?

Another thought of why it might not look good to you is that the color seems not the same as the color of the walls (but that might also be the lighting playing tricks on me). The eye expects the same color of the sand as it is made from the same material as the rocks.

Besides all... I love it as it is already

Back from a weekend of swimming and riding on the roof rack of my 4WD (no joke). What'd I miss? Looks great, bigbadelf! And I concur on the transition thing. But otherwise, you've got it.

I agree with Kylara on this, the first thing that struck me was that the detritus is too much of a muchness, needs some variances. Love the floor, how did you dod that texture?

The greatest part of wisdom is learning to develop  the ineffable genius of extracting the "neither here nor there" out of any situation...."

This is how i dodded the texture. ;o) I didn't want to leave early this morning anyway. 8o) The floor and the detritus terrains began as copies of the walls/ceiling height map and then adjusted and reworked. As you can see in the Mat Lab, i'm using the ABC mode for the bump. It combines the DTE texture i'm using and the bump map for the stone shapes equally at 50% each (channel C).

Here's the bump texture used in channel B. Aside from the stone shapes, there's also a very course and shallow fractal bump that you can see here. The bump and terrain sizes are 4096x4096.

Here's the height map for the floor. If you look hard enough, you can see the same coarse fractal bump here as in the bump map.

And here's the DTE. Component one gives the color variation of the stone, component 2 gives color and a medium bump and component 3 gives a fine bump. Component 1 is based on Gradient noise with the Clip filter, component two is based on Gradient noise with the Smooth Clip filter and number 3 is based on fractal noise with the Gaussian filter. Any questions? Well, they'll have to wait till friday. ;o) See everyone on the other side.

BTW, for some odd reason, i haven't gotten a single ebot in response to this thread and i almost never uncheck "email me". Weird. Maybe i hit it by mistake. shrugs

@zescanner - I improvise as i compose, so i usually don't know what i'll end up with when i start. I wanted to do something with a tunnel, so i started building a small "stage" set of a section of tunnel with a number of different types of possible camera angles. So far, i've used the cameras to work on and monitor the textures. As i progress, i get more of an idea of where the piece is going. My next big step is to redo the walls and ceiling as crumbling carved shapes and spaces. As i go on, i'll get a sense of whether or not the "object" will be visible or not, or even if i go in a different direction altogether. IOW, to make a long story short: i don't know. 8o)

Thanks bigbadelf, I had a feeling you did it something like that. Was wondering if I could use the tecnique to improve the paving stones on my parade wip. Sorry about the typo, fingers out of sync with brain, as usual. Hope your move goes OK.

The greatest part of wisdom is learning to develop  the ineffable genius of extracting the "neither here nor there" out of any situation...."

By all means! I'm just beginning to understand a little bit about what i'm doing. I don't in any way consider this "my" technique. I'm glad i could be of help. Thanks for the move wishes. It'll be perfect. 8o)

@chohole - If you didn't know, the ABC combination technique is in the manual. The move went smoothly, thanks. @zescanner - While on the road i realized what the archeologists found - a coke bottle! LOL. I don't know if i'll use the bottle or if that's even gonna be the backstory for the final image. We'll see how it evolves. I thought it was a great punchline, though! 8o) @Kylara - I agree about the need for rocks. Once i pick a final camera angle i'll populate it accordingly. As for the sand color, i agree that one would expect it to be the same as the mass of rock it came from. Unfortunately, that's rarely, if ever, the case. Ground rock is usually lighter in color than a chunk of the rock (try scratching one rock on another). These colors are still in motion, anyway. The green on the rock doesn't work in the scene.