In this recipe, we will create a sand material, good for close objects as for distant ones:
To get ready, start Blender and switch to Cycles. Delete the default cube and add a plane. In the edit mode, scale it nine times bigger (18 units per side).
Go to the World window and click on Use Nodes, then click on the little square with a dot on the right-hand side of the color slot. From the menu, select Sky Texture. Set the Strength value to
0.300
.Select the lamp and go to the lamp's Object Data window and click on Use Nodes. Then change the Lamp type to Sun and set the Size value to
0.100
and the Strength value to2.000
. Change the light's color to R 1.000, G 0.782, B 0.310. In an orthogonal top view, rotate the Sun lamp to 45°.Place the camera to have a nice angle on the plane and switch the 3D view to a Camera view (press 0 from numpad).
Add a cube and a UV Sphere to the scene and place them leaning on the plane.
Select the cube...