[Tutorial] MOC Ground Texture

[evancelt]

As a follow up to my earlier MOC SNOT-edge base tutorial, I thought I’d show these phases of building out ground terrain complexity.

In this case I’m building a path through some sandy grass

Starting with a dark tan plate blank slate!

First up I added some olive green 1x2 plates to the surface. I covered up any visible joints between the underlying dark tan plates with the olive green.

Also tried to create some random-looking patterns of connected green plates to represent vegetation.

I put more of the olive green plates toward the front of the base since that would be closer to the camera.

Also added some 1x2 dark tan tiles near the edge of the base to help ease into the second layer of plates.

Left some blank studs nearest to the edge of the base to make that relief rise even more gradual.

Next up I added some 2x2 dark tan tiles to the middle to represent walked-on areas of ground, and then scattered 1x2 and 4x8 dark tan tiles to start filling in large areas of ground.

I tried to leave little 1x1 holes in the ground covering.

Next up I dropped some 1x2 light bley plates into the ground to represent some rocks

Next up was some 1x2 medium nougat plates

Then I started to fill in those empty 1x1 holes with dark bley plates, coral plates, and dark tan tiles. The tiles help make the ground look more walked on, and the coral was meant to add some color!

Finally, I added some round plates and tiles to the path area of the MOC. These were meant to represent pebbles on the path.

The finished product. A lot of it ended up getting covered up with figs/tents. I was glad for the pops of coral color, as the whole thing looks a bit dark tan heavy! The dark tan helps the white of the tents pop more.

For a future rendition, making the sunken road a different color (regular tan?) would have added some nice contrast.

Anyway, hopefully this was helpful for someone starting out with building ground complexity!

Edited March 11, 2021 by evancelt

[caiman0637]

Nice! Thanks for the tutorial!

[Mister Phes]

It looks more like BARF than SNOT!

Ok, I'll shut up now.

 

[NOD]

Super guide! The terrain looks fantastic.

[Brickander Brickumnus]

How many pieces did you use for the completed ground?

[evancelt]

2 hours ago, Brickander Brickumnus said:

How many pieces did you use for the completed ground?

The area of the clean slate base was roughly 50 x 40 studs = 2000 studs.

I think I used ~100 olive green 1x2 plates, ~100 dark tan 1x2 plates, ~50 medium nougat 1x2 plates, ~50 light bley 1x2 plates, and a mix of about 75 1x1 plates and tiles. There were 8 or so 4x8 plates in the top as filler too.

So maybe 400 pieces?

The base below itself used a whole bunch more.

Edited March 11, 2021 by evancelt

[evancelt]

12 hours ago, Mister Phes said:

It looks more like BARF than SNOT!

The coral helps with that  

[Brickander Brickumnus]

43 minutes ago, evancelt said:

The area of the clean slate base was roughly 50 x 40 studs = 2000 studs.

I think I used ~100 olive green 1x2 plates, ~100 dark tan 1x2 plates, ~50 medium nougat 1x2 plates, ~50 light bley 1x2 plates, and a mix of about 75 1x1 plates and tiles. There were 8 or so 4x8 plates in the top as filler too.

So maybe 400 pieces?

The base below itself used a whole bunch more.

Overall, quite a lot of pieces then.

I'm trying to figure out the cost ($) to this.

Thanks. 

[evancelt]

1 hour ago, Brickander Brickumnus said:

Overall, quite a lot of pieces then.

I'm trying to figure out the cost ($) to this.

Thanks. 

Yeah 1x2 and 1x1 plates can be expensive to purchase initially. I've found it's cheapest to buy them in bulk from a single BL store. Most 1x2 plates can be found for less than $0.05 each and most 1x1 plates can be found for less than $0.12 - funny that 1x1s cost more than 1x2s! Olive green tends to be much more expensive than more common colors like light bley.

Tiles are more expensive than plates for some reason, so I have fewer of those (still a bunch though).

You could probably reproduce what I have here with $100 to $200 in bulk buys. It ends up costing that much because few BL sellers have all of the colors in bulk, so then you have to pay for multiple shipping fees, etc.

I think I have 13 different colors in bulk (>100, tan, dark tan, dark bley, light bley, reddish brown, olive green, medium nougat, dark orange, sand green, lime green, white, dark red, green), and then smaller amounts for rarer colors (e.g., trans clear, coral, aqua, yellow, blues, dark brown, etc)

These small plate and tile elements are super versatile, though, so I'm sure you'd get your money's worth out of them. They are now the workhorse of my collection.

Edited March 11, 2021 by evancelt

[Bregir]

19 hours ago, evancelt said:

These small plate and tile elements are super versatile, though, so I'm sure you'd get your money's worth out of them. They are now the workhorse of my collection.

Agreed. Building ships, for instance, I often uses plates rather than bricks. They give both a nice texture and a stronger hull. And then they are great for landscaping or buildings too. Typically, when placing a BL order, I check if they have any relevant 1 by X plate colours in bulk. (Well, I used to, now I have quite a lot!)

EDIT: I forgot to ask: Excellent tutorial! I agree another base colour for the road might have helped it blend in less, but it turned out an excellent build!