Brick and Cobblestone Road

How I came to create this style of road

My goal was to use three styles of stones that formed a road and side walk that told a bit of a story. I wanted each stones materials to inflect why the manufacturer might have picked that stone, which stones were more expensive based on their lack of erosion or roughness, and have each stones style of chipping /damage be unique. I ultimately created a mortar style material that holds all the stones together but if I had a bit more time I'd like to go back and create a loose sand/dirt material to sit in-between the stones with some gravel on-top. I avoided it here because of the challenges with height color and blending I was having on this project. 


 


 Process thoughts:


 As a Nuke Compositor I am both really pleased with how the Node tree can look and frustrating how hard it can be to keep clean. I made a mess making mattes for the uniform color but I am happy how clean most of it turned up. Again I had struggles controlling the height map here and there but minus where the triangle bricks meets the mortar, I think most of it came out alright. The edges of my stones look very tessellated and jaggy. Hoping the next few courses go into what might be causing that.