Making a Rock Stack - by Orbital

This is a simple model that I’ve used time and again in my renders.
It can be used as the main focus, usually with a nice tower or castle on top or to fill out your landscapes.

Most of you may already know this but each time you click on the rock generator a different shape rock will appear. It’s then a question of arranging them to suit your purposes. I find that it’s best to stick to rocks that have a smooth rounded appearance, as sometimes the more jagged ones don’t take too kindly to textures. So you may need to delete some as they appear.

As you arrange the rocks make sure that you take advantage of using the camera angles so that you fit the rocks together nicely without any gaps. Also you may want to resize and change the angle to give the stack a more interesting shape as opposed to just piling them on top of each other. Once the rocks have been arranged how you like, its time to select them and texture them. You can use a default texture or create your own from a high resolution photograph.

As a finishing touch add some foliage to your stack.
I did this by arranging some trees and placing them so only the leaves are visible.
Once again make use of the camera angles to place them correctly.

You can download the Rockstack Bryce 5 OBP here:
http://pappathan.net/free/orbital_rockstack_b5.zip
[608 KB zip]

The materials I used above are available here:
http://pappathan.net/free/orbital_rockmatb5.zip
[1,798 KB zip]

Rock and Render on.
Cheers,

Joe