Creating a realistic rocky shoreline using sketchup/vray

[Royal-1135]

Hi

I am trying to recreate a rocky shoreline. So far not happy with using a texture on a flat surface. I was trying to incorporate 3D rocks but still not working out. Wondering if anyone has some suggestions for creating a realistice rocky shoreline.

[tuna1957]

“Rocky shoreline” is pretty broad description. Would be helpful if you posted some images showing what you’re shooting for.

[Royal-1135]

Hi Tuna1957

Thanks for the response. I think this will also be determined by what options are available to create a realistic shoreline.

[Anssi]

The first image looks very Finnish to me. The last Ice Age formed the rocks. (edit, found the image, it is in the same latitudes but in the American continent)

[Royal-1135]

The cottage I am modeling is on the east shore of Lake Huron as are the photos I attached.

[bmike]

I haven’t done a rocky shore, but I’ve done dunes and grass. You’ll need to sandbox some terrain, then create and infinite plane with water as a texture from v-ray. For the terrain texture I created maps for where the grass would grow and the sand would be visible. I’ve also done this with rocky woodland terrain.

Then you would want to use skatter plugin to randomly size and distribute trees, rocks, weeds, etc.

I used similar techniques for this forest pavilion.

Be sure to spend time on your lighting and atmosphere.

[Royal-1135]

@bmike

Then you would want to use skatter plugin to randomly size and distribute trees, rocks, weeds, etc.

Thanks bmike for the response. I am looking at combining sand and stone textures with 3D rock models.
Finding next to impossible to create a rocky surface with the SandBox Tool ( correct me if I am wrong.)

[bmike]

You’ll need to create the base with the sandbox and then spread rocks on it, bunched up and random, scaled and rotated. It will be memory intensive to render and handle, so perhaps you’ll need to use proxy objects for the rocks. Further away from the camera you can just use painted on textures.

[eric-s]

Check out Megascans. It comes at a cost but they’re great.

[Royal-1135]

Thanks very much Mike for the response.

[Royal-1135]

HI Eric

Thanks for the response. I was looking at Megascans yesterday. Can you adjust the sizes of the rocks when in Sketchup plus will the rocks convert to a proxy if needed.

[eric-s]

Good questions. Yes you can adjust the size…scale like any other component. Next, Keep in mind that you’ll need an importer for MS since they provide .OBJ format. I like Transmutr.

Here is the materials slot where it takes a few seconds to plug them in:

Here is the rock rendered. Just this one rock is 15mb but that’s all materials. Without materials its only 1mb.

Here is a proxy exported from V-Ray side by side for comparison…

But keep in mind that the OBJ import is quite small at less than 900 edges

[Elmtec-Adam]

I gave it a try using Chaos Cosmos and the Chaos Scatter across some bits of Add location terrain

my skp is here if you want to take a look

[Royal-1135]

Hi Adam

Thanks for the response. To confirm you used the rocks from Cosmos. If so, did you use a mix of the different rocks?

[Elmtec-Adam]

Those are the ones!
There are about 4 I used - if you take a look at the SKP you can see the scatter settings I used.

They looked much better when I adjusted the probability of the rocks so they were not as evenly scattered in numbers
rockyshore.skp (7.0 MB)

[Elmtec-Adam]

That’s all purely random scattering, I’m sure you could place a few larger rocks and hero assets to improve the composition.

[Royal-1135]

Hi Eric

Thanks again for the response. A big help.

[eric-s]

NP. Love that there are options for you to choose from. A fun project as well!