Cycles material in blender – are they worth the effort?

I have been working on a genuine cycle material for some time. The model is a rock, but I hope when I will be happy with the final result, it can be applied to different models.

I like using procedural generated texture, in this way all of the textures are originally created and I’m not using somebody else work. It takes more effort, but once it is done the texture look excellent, it is possible to bake them in high detail, like 4k, and you can play with the variables endlessly :).
Here is how one of the versions looks.

It is a very detailed model with 370k triangles.
I have done retopo of the model with about 3k triangles, and the quality is preserved. Also i have exported it to Unity with baked textures.
Here is it without the material.

So, the material itself. It is quite complicated one, or at least for a user with my expertise :). Here is the node tree.

I basically use noise texture to mix different colors, and I do it couple of times with different scales. I also have musgrave texture. Then the pointiness future from the geometry node to highlight the edges. I use it as a factor, to mix a lighten and darken version of the color mix. I have gradient texture to darken the bottom, and separate RGB node to add some green on the top.

Scratches

The group below is actually in the original node tree.

It is a combination of wave texture and musgrave texture, repeated 8 times in different direction and angles.

Then I use this as a factor to mix light and dark variation of the basic colors. And I do this two times, first subtle one, so they are everywhere but not that exposed, and then once again with more influence on the edges, so the scratches are more visible on the edges.

To summarise:

• mixing colours with multiple noise textures,
• geometry poininess mix factor to highlight edges,
• gradient texture mix factor to darken botom,
• separate RGB for moss,
• dedicate node group for scratches.

What do you think of this? Is this a good workflow, or do you have some suggestions? If you have any questions write me a comment.

Thanks for reading.

@dalz