Photogrammetry_SandStoneWall_01

I recently stumbled upon an old free material I captured during a trip along the ocean coast. I decided to refresh it quickly with my current knowledge and render a scene.

The source maps were saved in 8-bit PNG at 8k resolution, which made recovering the height a main issue to address.
Fortunately, ArtEngine provided a few workarounds for this issue. I converted the normal map to an estimated height map, then baked a new height map from the source geometry (always good to keep those just in case) to obtain the correct values for the seams and the rocks. I plugged that map into the color transfer node to automatically transfer values from one map to another. After that, I made some basic adjustments to the roughness map and AO. Lastly I noticed that Diffuse true resolution is 2k, so to add some extra data, I used Topaz Gigapixel (the old one) to upscale it back to 8k.

It's incredibly satisfying to see how something that once gave me so much trouble is now an enjoyable task + there is one old project to remove from "to do" list.