Castle Valley Collection #1 Documentation V1.0

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Thanks for purchasing "Castle Valley Collection #1" by Goatogrammetry!  

This is a matched photogrammetry set that has been optimized by hoof by a team of goats to be efficient, while not sacrificing quality.  Polygons were placed to maximize shadow casting and silhoutte shape, and the UVs are top notch.  Your viewport wont bog down like it does with regular photogrammetry!

Visit http://www.goatogrammetry.com/ for customer support and to meet the crew.

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MATERIALS AND TEXTURES:

Sometimes several rocks will share a texture depending on size and the assumed distance one might expect the camera to be in a scene.  For instance, the really awesome boulders and formations that you'll use in the foreground have a higher pixel density than the tall cliffs in the background.

Albedo(sRGB, 4K)

Normals(tangent space, 4K)

Displacement(grayscale, 4K)

Occlusion(grayscale, not 4K)

Roughness (only included for specific objects which have a shiny patina in certain spots, otherwise generated in-shader)

A naming convention is used to match materials to their objects.  The object "CVC_Boulder_01_AJ" uses "CVC_Material_AJ" as its texture. 

To change the color of the whole set at once, open any rock's material in the Shader Editor window.  Click the GROUP NODE "CVC_Tinting_Group" and press "TAB".  This will open the group.  By default, nothing happens here, but there are a few unconnected nodes that you can link to the Group Output node that will turn the entire set gray, as an example.  Roughness is controlled in a similar way, except that the materials for the sandstone "plates" (AW and AX) use image files to control roughness due to some shiny patina in certain spots.

All of the rocks use a "Detail Texture".  This is a repeating texture that blends in micro detail when viewed up close.  

Some rocks use 2 material slots, such as the big cliffs.  Slot 2 is for the smooth top or backside which is not meant to show and gets a very basic material.  The tree uses slot 2 for the translucent foliage shader.

Note that EEVEE does NOT SUPPORT DISPLACEMENT, so displacement textures are for CYCLES.

Occlusion maps are included with this set, but not used with the shaders provided because Blender's "Principled BSDF Shader" doesn't support them.  You're getting them just for completeness, in case you wish to use them in a custom shader or for tinting purposes, or in case you need them for other software/render engines.

A special shader called "CVC_Terrain_Material_01" is included, which can mix several of the ground textures via vertex color painting.  Red, Green, and Blue vertices define the different textures.  You can edit the shader to change which textures are drawn, or adjust and tint them as needed.  This shader projects the textures down from above in a tiling manner.

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EEVEE:

The Castle Valley Collection was made for Eevee!  Everything in the set should be ready to use as is.  

For best results, be sure your Ambient Occlusion is set up to work at a large enough distance.

You'll probably be making large scenes, so be sure to set your light's shadow distance correctly.

I like to use SSGI (Screen Space Global Illumination) for bounced light.  Otherwise, be sure to bake some probes to get that nice indirect lighting-- Its the one thing that Cycles does so much better than Eevee, so we've gotta fake it!

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CYCLES:

Cycles is great and really creates beautiful bounced light, but there are some issues to be aware of--

Path-tracing render engines can have trouble with lower polygon models' normals in relation to shading.  Specifically, there is something called the 'TERMINATOR PROBLEM' which causes hard edges where there should be a smooth surface.  Blender 2.9+ has an option in "Object Properties-->Shading-->Shadow Terminator Offset" that can help, but if the camera is close, you'll need to crank up the polycount.  Here's how:

In the "Render properties" tab, set Cycles' "Feature Set" to "! Experimental".

Add a SUBDIVISION MODIFIER to the rock.  Set it to "SIMPLE" and 2 or 3 levels of division.  You could also click the "Adaptive Subdivision" checkbox for even better results, but you'll probably have to raise the dicing scale a bit or risk running out of memory.

There is an example shader called "CVC_Displacement_Example_AM".  Apply it to the rock by selecting it in the "Material Properties" tab (Pick it from the dropdown).  If there is a number to the right of the dropdown, that means many objects are using that material.  To make a unique copy of the material which you can safely change, click on that number (It will vanish).  

Go into "Shading Mode" and locate all the texture nodes.  Replace the textures with the ones that match the rock's naming convention.

Now you have a super high poly mesh that Cycles can render correctly up close.  There is an example rock (off to the side) that is set up for Cycles.

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If you have any questions, and to check on the progress of future sets, go to http://www.goatogrammetry.com/

This asset set is royalty free, but please do not share it outside your actual project group-- The goats need to eat too!

Thanks again, and I hope "Castle Valley Collection #1 " lives up to your highest expectations!