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I would like to displace a plane with a texture of a slate image to get a realistic 3D stone model. It should be fractured, liked this image:

http://www.randomghost.com/post/86272286137/shrbr-fracture-series-by-flight404-on-flickr#=

Everytime I try to displace any plane (no matter how high the number of subdivides) I end up with something that resembles this:

Displaced plane

And this does not look anything like a realistic slate model. Is there any other way I can use to transform the plane to achieve this effect ? Can I achieve the same effect with Cell Fracture and if so how can I do this ?

Thank you very much.

digit
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    just turn down the strength of the displace modifier. something like 0.1 is probably enough. (the default of 1 is way too high.) – David Feb 29 '16 at 15:21
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    It also helps to drag the strength value while holding the Shift Key, so you feel that you have a little control over the amount. Start with @David's value, hold Shift and slide it around a little. – Rick Riggs Feb 29 '16 at 15:25
  • Thank you ! Much better but it still does not look very realistic. Anything else I can do to improve the result ? I could not find the UV mapping for the texture and the UV seems a bit distorted. Does the UV always need to be a square (same size as the plane ) ? And if I unwrap, what are the best settings ? – digit Feb 29 '16 at 15:41
  • You should start by unwrapping in the first place , then subdivide, this way you will not get any distortion in your uv's (if you don't intend to modify the model 'by hands'). I guess what Hendriks3D meant by "..is also set to UV..." is setting the texture's mapping to uv in the texture panel, though it will not have any influence on the displace since this part is independent from the displace modifier where you choose 'uv' as coordinates. Cheers. – Yvain Mar 31 '16 at 09:35
  • Also your displacement image should be slightly blurred. If it is sharp you will get all those jagged edges. Also like David said. Set the strength to 0.1 or so. – icYou520 Oct 26 '16 at 22:32
  • Also whenever you blur it, you lose detail...it's a losing strategy if you want it to look great. You just have to take the time to sculpt the shape using the image as a guide if you want a decent model at the end. – JakeD Feb 02 '17 at 20:14
  • @pycoder I was watching a CG Cookie tutorial and Kent Trammel had a really good way of doing something similar. He actually used 2 images. He blurred one for the general displacement and he then used the "sharp" one to add in the finer details. I don't remember his node set up but it was a great way to control the details. – icYou520 Feb 02 '17 at 21:38
  • @icYou Yes you can try to do that, but it is never as good as a clean sculpt. I've built hundreds of displacement textures, and I've practically seen it all. The tricks are nice and all, but for the most part they don't work well under most circumstances. The problem with a tutorial like that is they will choose an image that works with their technique, then claim (or indirectly assert) that it actually works for most textures. If someone actually knew a fool-proof solution, they'd be rich for sure (to put it into perspective, I made over $500 last month selling about 75 textures). – JakeD Feb 02 '17 at 22:02

4 Answers4

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If you are using Blender 2.78 (set to experimental)

You need to first take that image and blur it slightly. Then Make sure you subdivide your mesh and unwrap. Add a subserf modifier, click adaptive. Then set everything up as you see in the images below. enter image description here

enter image description here

enter image description here

enter image description here

enter image description here

You are getting those spikes because the image is not blurred.

icYou520
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  • I can't run 2.78 in experimental mode. I do not have set feature option in Render and in Subsurf Menu there is no Adaptive check I can activate. How can I run in experimental and do I need a GPU for that ? Thank you very much. Interesting option ! – digit Nov 02 '16 at 13:31
  • Ok, I found the solution. It is in Cycles and not Blender Render, but unfortunately I do need it as render but as .stl and even though I could not find the multiple node, the result looked nice, but was not deforming the plane. Is it possible to get a deformed plane with this ? Thanks – digit Nov 02 '16 at 14:26
  • If you need it as a STL file then you may need to displace the plane another way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzR6R9t4b0M i.e. the multiple node is actually just a math node then change the setting to multiply. – icYou520 Nov 02 '16 at 15:10
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Maybe you could try to unwrap the plane, set the displacement modifier to UV in stead of generated and play around with the strength and midlevel settings to get it right. Make sure the texture you are using is also set to UV otherwise you will get weird results.

Let me know if this works!

Hendriks3D
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press numpad 3 in Edit mode, select only the tips at the top and move them to the left so the "mountains" arent pointing straight up but slanted to the side.

Next try using the decimate modifier on the mesh.

eromod
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The image you want to use is not a proper image to use as displacement map as you want/need. A displacement map can help you model something in 2,5D (not 2D or 3D). A 2,5D model (also named as heightmap) will consider the color of each pixel as "intensity" of displacement (or height above the rest), so each pixel RGB and clarity must have a intensity relation to the next ones, that's why you usually find displacement maps as gradients, where darker colors means less height and lighter colors will be higher. To create a real displacement map you may consider to model your self the object you want and bake the displacement map, or to fake the displacement with graphic editor software (like Paint.net [via plugins], Gimp [via plugins], Photoshop [under "3D" options] or others,). There is some specific software that will allow you to build this (and other usefull maps) like CrazyBump and similars, or you can pay for someone to do this maps to you for a specific image. For a realistic depth, you may try to consider to learn photogrammetry (you may try VisualSFM as it is free). I've built these maps for you (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7t43CPM6VA-OWRPd2ZzTXJZMGc). Use for displacement, the file called "slate_DISP.png". You'll find in the RAR file the albedo, normal, occlusion and specularity maps of that image.

MCunha
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