Creating Moss texture

[3don]

I need to figure out how to create moss for a project I'm working on, but am pretty new to texturing. Does anyone have any ideas of how to go about creating realistic or even semi-realistic looking moss? It looks pretty similar to velvit or something too... so even something similar to get me headed in the right direction.

8D

[cowsmanaut]

easy answer:

Digital camera + photoshop + a little time= texture

harder answer:

look online for pictures of moss + photoshop (or other drawing prog) + a little (or more) time = texture

Total pain in the butt:

draw it from hand on or off(if you have a scanner) the computer, or find some moss and scan it.. use windex to clean it later..

any of this helping?

[3don]

ya, that's what I'm going to do, but I'm mainly worried about how to get the fuzzy, soft looking appearance. Would that be just playing around with specularity... or are there special shaders to get that look? Any ideas...

[atyss]

Hi,
Here is my advice. It does not matter wich software/renderer you use for this.

1-Observe as long as you can. Look at pictures, or find some real like samples to see with your eyes.
You have to identify these: the colors, the colors of shadows, the colors of highlight, the strenght of these highlights, and the general texture (bumpiness) of the surface.

2-Create the color (diffuse) map. This is where you put the general colors. Making a texture from photographs in Photoshop is the better way.

3-Convert your image to grayscale, and edit it to create your bump map. The bump does not have to be strong when you adjust it in the software, otherwise the "soft" look of the moss will be broken.

4-Create a specular map. This will give the software the information about wich part of the surface shall have highlights. IMHO, you should take the bump map, and boost the contrast, to leave only light gray and white spots. Again, don't apply it with 2 much strenght.

5-Another way to create a specular map is to take your diffuse map, boost the lightness, edit the colors to get the desired highlight colors, and put in its alpha channel the map created in #4.

6-Reduce the specularity of the material (in XSI it is the shading model) so the specularity is very low. And do not turn up your specular decay above 150, if you use the Phong shading model.

7-You can add an ambient map, wich is the contrary of the specular map. Take your diffuse map, turn down the brightness, change the colors as you want, and apply an alpha channel the will only allow the most dark spots to be visibles.

I think it is a good start for creating moss, and actually any other kind of texture.

If I may... If you are unfamiliar with textures, can I recommend you a book about texture creation? It is called [Digital] Texturing & Painting, by Owen Demers, on New Riders editions. You can find it at Amazon.com
This book covers in great lenght the process of creating textures, from the basic observation to the creation by painting, to techniques in Photoshop, to how to use them in a 3D package (Maya is featured in this book, sorry - don't kill the messenger!!!). I'm sure it could benefit you!

Bernard Lebel

[cowsmanaut]

Well I'm really big on doing things the easy way. you could create two surfaces with two maps.

first surface has mostly the under layer of moss.. so patches of dirt with the darker less saturated strands of moss. Then on top you create a map with an alpha and a bump. This one is strands of moss wich could be randomly in the alpha but remember to make the edges rough (use some noise maybe) since each stand of moss is furry like. then with the play of light and shadows you have fuzzy strands of moss shadowing the under layer you have created.. the bump map is more or less just to complete the fuzzy look.

the only thing you really need a picture of moss for is colours and reffrence in this method. you just use some variance in your main map and try to make sure to use the offset filter to make sure there is no obvious pattern to your tiled image. (this is mostly important for the alpha) this way you can play with the tiling to get the look you want and the softness too...

I don't know how much easier this may be compared to the one above.. however to me it sounds like less work thinking about how many seperate maps you would have to make.

the bump map in this one is just noise.the colour is just random and the only two you need to pay attention to is the under layer (dirt etc) and the alpha..

[atyss]

In reply to:

I don't know how much easier this may be compared to the one above.. however to me it sounds like less work thinking about how many seperate maps you would have to make.

Sorry, but I prefer doing things the hard way!

Bernard

[cowsmanaut]

I stick to the easiest way that works usually, this sometimes is not really the easiest method but usually not the hard way

I mean sometimes I will start from scratch rather than try to fix something because it will take longer without knowing how it will look. I think it really depends on your way of thinking.

If you are good at scraping together bit's and ends into something working you would probably be fastest reworking a bad scene. However if you are more into structure then building from scratch will give you something you can understand easier and less cluttered. (now I'm rambling)

for me the use of seperate maps for every value seems like a lot more work than I should need for something so trivial as moss. I mean don't get me wrong if you have a world in there where termites have set base camp to consume the tree it lives on and you want to spend a lot of time on that moss patch close up.. then it should look awesome. However if it's some where in tha back ground flashing by as some guy on a horse zips through the forrest well.. Just how cool does it have to be?

[3don]

hey all, thanks for the help

The first use of Moss is on a helmet that I'm modeling. The rest would be for the scene. So I guess I could either do a complex and simple version of moss for close up and distance... or use one.

I'll probably end up trying a few different ways of creating the moss texture, because that's what I end up doing sometimes. It helps me to learn and see which one looks the best.

thanks for the suggestions.

[pnoizat2]

this is a pleasant suprise.....
I have just migrated from the max forums where a detailed account of texturing seems to kill threads dead.

sounds about right to me.....
just one thing does anyone kow of an algorithym that can generate a bump/ displacement map from an image?

surely by inputing a rough light estimate, something coherent could be produced....?