Gemstone Ore (preview)

Something I cooked up this morning...

Default:


Preset 2:


Preset 3:


Comments and critique are always welcome!

Well, there are actually a number of reasons why these samples might appear that way... (not the least of which is the fact that they are only 67% of the original size images, due to size constraints of the forum... and the fact that web browsers often do not display colors true to the original either.)

Part of it is also the illusion of flatness created by two factors:

1 - When viewing any image like this, where the point of view is directly 'overhead', shadows and highlights can become arbitrary. Put another way, an image can even seem like the height and depth have suddenly reversed.

2 - Because I wanted a lot of contrast between the 'gemstone' areas, and the surrounding rock, the high saturation of the colors in the gemstone parts tends to make them stand out even more, which further adds to the flattening appearance.

The truth is, I have tried these in a 3D environment, and there really isn't a problem in that aspect.

However... I do tend to agree that the appearance in 2D could benefit from the illusion of added depth. The problem lies in the reflectivity however.

I wanted reflectivity for the gemstone areas, but since you cannot selectively apply the reflectivity value to only parts of the final image, I needed to make the surrounding rock very rough to counter the reflectivity effects.

I tried any number of various combinations of noise applications to do this, but a very small scaled perlin was the only way to do this without destroying the forms completely. Believe it or not, the perlin noise is only blended into the host rock, and even that is only at 1% opacity. (yes... ONE PERCENT)

For examples of the prototypes:

This is the original, with no extra roughness added to the rock:


And here is a sample where I simply increased the roughness of the original noise source:


And for the sake of clarity... here are sections of the full size images for both of those, in the same order:




As you can see; even boosting the roughness for the original noise source had a tremendous amount of destructive power on the rock form.

I do like the original, but I felt there was not enough contrast in the reflectivity of the two mediums, which is why I tried half a thousand ways to make the surrounding rock more rough.

I'm going to continue to work on this one, and may update it the minute it is in the library.

Yeah... I just finally realized this last night... but thanks.

Here is the latest revision (really just part of the full size tile):