Lapis Lazuli

Hello! Thought I'd show some work I did trying to simulate lapis lazuli, the gorgeous blue stone we've all heard of.

I started as I always do with most materials I need to make from scratch, and set up a reference sheet in PurRef. Such beautiful stones, they are, even when unpolished!

I wanted to start simple and then keep layering things atop my basic crystal structure for the stone, like entropy effects (dirt, cracks, erosion). After setting out my outputs I slowly begin with the graph, establishing a basic cloudy substructure with a gradient map taken from my reference sheet.

After various map creations and some blend nodes, I settled on something nice. But not done yet!

I enter Sampler and begin to add and tweak some effects! I added some dirt, cracks, and other entropies. Played around with some roughness, exposed some parameters. Looks much more believable and story-driven!

Thanks for viewing!