desert sand dunes

General Discussion
1

Hi

I need to make some desert sand dunes for one of our projects.

At the moment we have a low poly env with the base duens blocked out. What Im needing is to add detailing on top.
Especially the scalloped wind blown feel of sand

southern-australia-strzelecki-desert-sand-dunes_708890.jpg407×600

Do you think WM will be useful.

With WM Ive found it hard to get into finer detailing like this. any ideas?

Cheers

SnS

2

It is possible

Try the following:

  1. Make a single dune that spans the whole heightfield. I assume that it will look roughly like a triangular prism. (I hope you know what I mean ^^)
  2. Add Ramp device, turn up frequency, check Keep full height.
  3. Go to 2

I also suggest adding a little displacement to break the pattern/make it look more natural.

One problem of course will be the resolution of your terrain. If it’s 1km x 1km you will need at least a resolution of 2k² to make 1m wide details. So it might be a good idea not to include those details directly in the terrain.
From your photo it looks like those ripples are only on one side - use Select angle to mask those areas.

EDIT!: Note that the preview will suffer from heavy aliasing with fine repeating structures like that! You’ll have to build the world to get a realisitc view.

3

thanks!! I’ll give it a go

4

Ive setup a dune using Perlin noise and have a nice ridgeline.

When I then pipe it into the ramp any slight change from 1.0 pretty much explodes the mesh. Even checking Keep full height doesnt help.

Im thinking I prob need to use the ramp thru a additional combiner somehow right?

-P

5

That shouldn’t happen. Can you post a screenshot?

6

Not sure if I can attach images from work. (They have a fairly tight fire wall)

Can I email you?
Or…waht result do you get from going from a perlin into a ramp?

-SnS

7

Works just as expected for me.

Load it up from home. I’m going to bed anyway :wink: