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I was curious if anyone had any ideas on how I could replicate this texture? If I start playing around with texture displacements, but it always breaks the mesh.

enter image description here

Any help would be appreciated!

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  • $\begingroup$ Hello Oliver :). Please mark one of the answers as accepted if it solved you problem. Thanks. $\endgroup$ Mar 5, 2021 at 12:53

2 Answers 2

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If you'd rather not spend the poly-budget until render-time, you could do it with a Cycles (only) displacement shader. The features seem to be following the topology, so you could U UV unwrap your object with the 'Reset' option. That will make all the quads occupy the whole 0-1 UV space.

For render-time displacement to work,at the time of writing, Cycles has to be set to 'Experimental', and the material has to be set to 'Displacement', or 'Displacement and Bump' in its Settings panel.

The object has to be subdivided sufficiently to resolve the displacement detail. However, Cycles can decide how much render-time subdivision is needed, on a per-pixel basis, by giving the object a Subdivision Surface modifier, and checking 'Adaptive'.

Then you can use this sort of shader-tree:

enter image description here

To get this sort of result:

enter image description here

The 'Subtract' and 'Multiply' nodes could be a vector 'Mapping' node, if you prefer, and the 'Vector Curves' could be a 'Color Ramp' node, if you'd find it easier to use.

EDIT: Thanks to commentary by @Chris, about problems he encountered with this tree, I think it would actually be easier to use RGB Curves than Vector Curves.. the 'C' combined adjustment becomes available.. it behaves better. Here's his .blend, given the easier set-up:

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  • $\begingroup$ Edit: I was asking you to share your file but I rebuilt it from scratch, powerful method... $\endgroup$
    – moonboots
    Sep 16, 2020 at 11:56
  • $\begingroup$ Oops! Maybe I should have shared.. I would have to remake it, it was just a quickie. I'll wait to see whether @Oliver goes this way, and needs more help. $\endgroup$
    – Robin Betts
    Sep 16, 2020 at 12:57
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    $\begingroup$ Hello mr. Betts :). Great one. Could you please edit in that it needs Displacement enabled in Material settings, and currently only works in Cycles? We have some confused users... Thanks :). $\endgroup$ Nov 11, 2020 at 8:47
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    $\begingroup$ @JachymMichal Wilko! $\endgroup$
    – Robin Betts
    Nov 11, 2020 at 8:48
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    $\begingroup$ @Chris 'Haro, Glasshoppa!' (hmm.. enough of that :D) Partly your problem, (subdividing geometry after resetting the UV, so quads are not filling UV 0-1). Partly mine. Looking back, I think it's more intuitive to use RGB Curves, where you can control everything through the 'C' combined channel. Without worrying about how X,Y, and Z all contributing to the vector->value cast if you use Vector Curves. Do I have permission to link your file, corrected, in this answer? $\endgroup$
    – Robin Betts
    Apr 14, 2021 at 16:41
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You can try it with the Tissue addon:

  • Activate the Tissue addon. Create your module (make sure the vertices that are on the perpendicular borders can fit):

enter image description here

  • Create your target object (here a sphere), keep in mind that the Tissue addon will use the faces of the target object to duplicate the module:

enter image description here

  • Open the N panel > Edit > Tissue Tools. Select the module object, shift select the target object, click Tessellate, keep the default settings, press OK:

enter image description here

  • It has created a new object. Go in Edit mode and Merge Vertices by Distance. Right click and Shade Smooth. Give it a Smooth modifier and a Subdivision Surface modifier. Increase the Factor value of the Smooth modifier until the new object has a smooth sphere shape, then apply this modifier only:

enter image description here

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