[Tutorial]: How To Make Procedural Rock Cliffs In Blender

Text version of Tutorial: www.polygonartists.com/blende...
In this Blender 3D tutorial, learn how to create procedural non-destructive cliffs in Blender using metaballs and Cycles render engine.
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Chapters Markers
00:00:00 Intro
00:00:44 Reference
00:01:12 Analysing Reference Image
00:02:42 Cliff Blockout
00:06:34 Shader Requirements
00:07:51 Material & Render Setup
00:08:23 Displacement Setup
00:17:42 Cliff Base Color
00:23:19 Procedural Grass Shader
00:31:00 Outro
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Project File:
polygonartist.gumroad.com/l/p...
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Realistic Trees Tutorial:
www.polygonartists.com/how-to...
Speed Up Blender Viewport
• How To Speed Up Blende...
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Cliff Reference Image:
unsplash.com/photos/CRvaC071ZXo
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Music From KZbin Library:
Serenity - Akash Gandhi
Waiting - Andrew Langdon
T'as où les vaches? - Dan Bodan
We Are The Rain - Akash Gandhi
Angel's Dream - Akash Gandhi
#blender3d #blendertutorial #Procedural

[@polygonartist]

Chapter Markers: 00:00:00 Intro 00:00:44 Reference 00:01:12 Analysing Reference Image 00:02:42 Cliff Blockout 00:06:34 Shader Requirements 00:07:51 Material & Render Setup 00:08:23 Displacement Setup 00:17:42 Cliff Base Color 00:23:19 Procedural Grass Shader 00:31:00 Outro

[@daredeman3430]

Thank you so much, so useful ! Btw, a tip for everyone wondering : Musgrave was changed for "Noise Texture", in the latest version

[@diegoarce490]

After searching so much in KZbin for a tutorial on make a simple one mountain, you have the answer. This is exactly what I was looking for. Blender is soooo complicated to create figures for 3D printing. THANK YOU

[@davidtch0917]

I'm surprised how useful this. Super useful, detailed and exactly what I needed! Thank you!

[@polygonartist]

You're very welcome!

[@cg.man_aka_kevin]

Finally I can remade Floating Hallelujah Mountains from Avatar Pandora! :D

[@Robb1n11]

My man, this is exceptional. You are doing the lords work right here

[@dannysupertrail]

Perfect solution! Thanks from Brazil.

[@chrisgoart]

Detailed. Useful. Excellently Done. Thank you!😄

[@masonfoster3810]

dude thank you so much, such a good tutorial

[@MasterofBeats]

Thank you mate this is beautiful

[@KKirmaci]

Upvoted for the spelling of "colour"

[@flankerchan]

Thank you for the written version :D Great for classical person like me.

[@polygonartist]

You're welcome, I like written tutorials too.

[@rouge_garance]

Omg thanks so much !!! You are amazing !!!

[@DKJens44]

Great Tutorial, thank you.

[@polygonartist]

Glad it was helpful! 👍

[@rewantsingh5864]

You are Dope ♥️♥️♥️♥️ Lots of love from INDIA 🇮🇳

[@mdtx3265]

Thank you so much for this tutorial ! it's amazing !

[@polygonartist]

Glad it was helpful!

[@yacinepoupou6867]

wow ! thunk you !

[@22adis]

Cool

[@xayn2381]

Thank you pic

[@user-ei4no8yf8i]

Exactly what I need！ many thanks for the tutorial！！ Respect from China！

[@KHANKHERJONG]

Despite all the mic issues in the comment i actually like the way the sound was coming through my headphones, sounded like some echo distortion filtere... That said, the tutorial was working real easy. But i actually did this to make assets for my environments, exporting to an fbx dint really work, i am reading stuff about baking and such, isnt there just a way to delete the sun and export the entire collection as a fbx or obj model and then reopen the file make a variation on the cliff export and go again etc etc. Thanks for you effort into supplying this for us!

[@angeliqueredangel2660]

thanx for your work, ++

[@polygonartist]

Welcome!

[@druvingame]

hey, I want to apply the displacement node geometry to the object geometry itself, can i do that? so i export this model into other software.

[@sinish5418]

Your voice tickles my brain.

[@YoYoBobbyJoe]

Quick question after doing this. Seemingly, the shader breaks down if a meta object goes too far from the original. It starts getting really jagged. Is there any way to prevent this?

[@LukaYuka1]

Amazing video! I usually work on things that aren't as detailed and I use already made textures for speed but when I saw the thumbnail of the cliff I knew I had to look at this. Really nice to see that making your own base colour or displacement can we so fun and "easy"! I do have one question - what happens when you have 2 Principled BSDF nodes and you want to bake your colour, normal, displacement and roughness? Does the engine take in account only the last BSDF in the order? Haven't made a model that has more than 1 BSDF so far and am not familiar with the process :) Also, but you already got one comment, your microphone isn't picking up the correct heights I think... and you have 2 videos without a mic after this one, so adjusting that would be lovely for future videos if you're able to do that! Thanks for the video and have a nice day!

[@polygonartist]

Thank you. 😁 Two pricipled shouldn't cause an issue as long as they are configured correctly. The important thing is to break the shader configuration down where PBR texture maps can be baked and exported as image textures. ✌️

[@neoanimationstudios]

use shift+p to frame the nodes in blender 3.4 and above

[@paulkuykendall5584]

A very cool little tutorial. A good intro to metaballs and a simple way to quickly create shader trees thru duplication. And I liked the written text too. It is easy to follow along.

[@ObiWineKenobi]

If I were to buy this, how would I apply the procedural effect on my own rocks?

[@Porkupine69]

I feel like a better way to hide nodes would be to change the factor of the mix node completely to one side instead of selecting and muting multiple nodes and risk missing one of them

[@xWtInCUBaTion]

Great tutorial, is it possible to transfer the final result into unity inclusive the shader information?

[@polygonartist]

Good question! Unfortunately in its current state this will not work outside of Blender. It can work outside Blender, though it will need some optimisations to do so.

[@ID1visor]

Q: Say I want to build a track for a game and then export as fbx, how'd I go about turning all this, not into a render but instead baking it to textures (so: diffuse, normals, specular, etc) to use on simpler objects since said game has a geometry limit? It's easier to just use textures and UV-Map them but I want to learn something new.

[@polygonartist]

You'll need to bake the geometry to polygons as well as baking the textures. Some game engines are weird and prefer triangulated mesh so you would need to look into that as well.

[@thesims4decouverte790]

Merci beaucoup pour vos vidéos ! Elle spent vraiment super continuez comme ça 😁

[@polygonartist]

C’est gentil, merci! ☺️

[@CamSpaghett]

Holy your scene renders so quick wtf

[@samanthastovell7870]

at 00:09:40 v3.5 settings don't have these settings only Backface culling, Blend mode, Shadow mode, Clip threshold, Screen space refraction, Refraction depth, Subsurface translucency and Pass Index. Have they been moved or removed? Other differences: Mix RGB is now just called Mix and you need to change "float" to "color" Putting nodes into a frame is now Ctrl J (Join in new frame) and F2 to rename

[@surajprakash3181]

in the shader when you press control + t, and the texture coordinate node pops up, you must select the object and add metaball in it.

[@oguzhan2413]

I can not buy it. Could you please upload to other platforms such as itch ?

[@ButteredToast0001]

Very good tutorial, I just wish my PC could handle the shader

[@polygonartist]

There are settings that you can tweak to make it more workable i.e. metaball viewport resolution. Also consider watching the 'Faster Viewport Playback' tutorial which might help squeeze more performance from Blender, it won't magically fix hardware issues though.

[@Shadowsphere1]

I reckon this should work just as well using actual textures instead of color to achieve a bit more surface detail and variation? Blender doesn't seem to have any stochastic texture sampling in their shader editor, which is rather unfortunate considering how useful (and how common it is nowadays) it is.

[@easymochi]

What sort of microphone do you use? It feels like you're talking inside of my brain, and weirdly enough I don't entirely dislike it...

[@neoanimationstudios]

and also press tab after pressing ctrl+g

[@euclois]

In the Musgrave Tx node I don't have Offset and Gain options, I'm using Blender 3.1 btw. Is it important?

[@euclois]

nevermind, I found it

[@DKJens44]

How do I export this to Unreal Engine 5?

[@polygonartist]

You'll need to convert the mesh to polygons and bake the shader setup into texture maps.

[@DKJens44]

@@polygonartist Okay thanks for the info. Then I have to see how that works. I don't really have much experience with Blender.

[@azynkron]

You need to reduce the bass on your mic. It's booming. Typically you want lots of midrange and some treble to make it sparkle.

[@polygonartist]

Yeah, kind of messed up on the sound on this one. Thanks for your input. 👍

[@AnAN-bn1ol]

what would you suggest for baking it to color

[@polygonartist]

If you want to bake the shader to a texture file then there are quite a lot of tutorials covering how to do just that. You will also need to bake the displacement for the texture to look right.

[@AnAN-bn1ol]

@@polygonartist wait so you didn't use geo nodes, its fake displacement in the render, I have to bake displacement then apply displacement for the mesh to look right

[@polygonartist]

@@AnAN-bn1ol Might be worth watching the video first. 🙃

[@flamiaminu5536]

Great tutorial! Would this work in Evee?

[@polygonartist]

Eevee doesn't support texture displacement at the moment. Maybe in a future update.

[@tessemi]

i need new headphones now.

[@qhutt4865]

You might be talking too close to the microphone

[@polygonartist]

Great tip, thank you! 👍

[@ZexMaxwell]

great vid. but mic has too much bass

[@AFishWithoutFins]

WAIT! Who says there is more than one way to skin a cat???

[@TBKJoshua]

Ikr 😂, I think he meant rabbit.

[@triangle4studios]

Just a huge tip, and I know how much it sucks hearing this, but your mic is capturing a very high amount of the lows in your voice and not enough highs. It make it very hard to listen with speakers.

[@polygonartist]

Point taken. Thanks for the tip. 👍

[@psy237]

these rock cliffs are not procedural ;) but nice outcome nonetheless :)

[@polygonartist]

Procedural workflows make use of copying objects over and over again, so you don’t have to do it manually. -SideFX Makers of Houdini Procedural is a umbrella term used for any 'procedure' that uses drivers, function or values within a cofined system to create end result operation that can be replicated, re-used or modified using the same driver, funtion, values etc. Sculpting a rock by hand is not procedural because the same rock cannot be recreated in a mathematical or technical method, although it can reused infinitely. Nonetheless method shown in the video uses shader editor (confined system) and nodes (drivers, function etc.) to create a cliff. These nodes and their values can be replicated, modified and used infinetely, hence the term 'Procedural' is used. I would recommend reading up on SideFX's website as they are the one who pioneered procedural workflows. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

[@MeshDy]

God darn why is there so much bass in your voice

[@7hroomy]

your mic makes it really hard to understand what you are saying