Sand

[the3dredege]

hello everyone,
hopefully you guys can help me. I have to create a glass orb that is filled with sand that has been layered to make a picture. You know the kind that is usually in every spanish tourist shop, a little bottle filled with sand that makes up a sunset or something. The glass is not a problem, but the sand, well this has got me. Thought of just using a small noise bump map, but don't think it's gonna be enough detail. It does have to look like grains of sand when you close up on it.

Thankyou very much for any help.

[toby]

use a photograph!

how close do you have to get to it?

[cagey5]

Is it something like this that you need?
It's just a planar projected picture onto the ball with a very fine high contrast fractal bump at 300% Opacity together with high specularity and gloss, in the region of 80%. Should be able to get it better with a bit of tweaking.

Hope it helps.

[cagey5]

And a closeup.
btw. As your question isn't a Mac specific problem you'll get more traffic reading it and therefore possible help if you post under tips and tricks.

[the3dredege]

That's great, a real help. That is pretty much what i need, although i'm worried that they will want to close up on it and actually want to see grains (very picky client) but that's a good start and i appreciate your trying for me and for your advice.

[cagey5]

If you knew what the final shot was going to be you could perhaps model the extra detail for an extreme close up but only in a very limited area to minimise poly count and render time.
I experimented a little further with adding noise to the picture in Photoshop and that seemed to improve things further, but I didn't save an image. May be worth a try though.