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I'm trying to add smaller rocks and dirt to cover a procedural rock texture and I haven't been able to make it look realistic due to the fact that the dirt texture I have been using is an image texture of a solid patch of ground. To fix this, I tried duplicating the original rock mesh and then applying modifiers to shrink and distort the duplicate so that one mesh will be the original rock, and the other will be the dirt covering it.

Here's a screenshot of what I am talking about (the blue part is the dirt covering):

enter image description here

Not only am I convinced this is the wrong way to go about it, I've also massively increased my poly count this way.

This is the node group for the dirt texture that is supposed to cover the rock. I used a transparent shader to try to give the effect of blending in but as you will see in the render, it doesn't look good at all. The 3 image textures are the original colour image, a gloss and normal map.

enter image description here

Here is the render:

enter image description here

So what I am wondering is, is there a way to use nodes to give the effect of some parts of the dirt texture being invisible to give a scattered effect?

Thanks!

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2 Answers 2

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The problem you have is that every spot is either a rock texture or a dirt texture. What you need is a way to blend between the two.

The way to do that is to use a mix shader with an image texture plugged into the mix

enter image description here

The image texture should be a grayscale image - in the areas where it is white you will get 100% rock texture, in the areas where it is black, you will get 100% dirt. Where it is in between, you will get a smooth blend of the two.

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  • $\begingroup$ Hm I can't seem to get the desired effect that way...could you provide a quick example or render result? $\endgroup$
    – lakerice
    Feb 23, 2018 at 4:16
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How about mixing two materials (the procedural and the image texture) using musgrave texture as factor?

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    $\begingroup$ Please don't answer with new questions. To ask for clarifications use the add a ccomment link. $\endgroup$
    – user1853
    Feb 23, 2018 at 0:55
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    $\begingroup$ This has the potential to be an answer. Please add some clarification and detail. A couple of images of NodeTrees would help explain what you mean. $\endgroup$ Feb 23, 2018 at 4:41

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