I have never been able to accomplish stone and this image is proof. Any suggestions? I used vrayplacement mod with a pretty good displacement map, but it look awful.
http://www.nor-son.info/temp\_uploads/ritchie/lake-side%20(web).jpg
Bobby: The embedded image is too small to see and the link to your website doesn’t go to an image page.
Stone
Try it now. It stinks working hard on something, looking back at it, and thinking “man, that sucks!”.
looks like the map is a photo of some pebbles rather than stacked stone to me.
Like peterguthrie said it, and the image filename suggest, you’ve got the scale wrong. These rocks are rounded, probably from abrasion. The stones needed to be small enough for the river to roll them, consider this.
Anyway, the map itself is a good start, you might want to get rid of the sharp shadows, can be painted out easily. Long and pretty boring task, but it’s worth it of you plan to use the map often.
For bigger rocks, try for example cgtextures.com, it has a nice stone collection.
best regards,
A.
I had a simular situation in a render I was working on a while back. I ended up just modeling the stones.
Actually, there is stone that big.
http://www.culturedstone.com/products/productdetail.asp?id=18
*Edit*: I would also suggest ‘stone cad’ by these guys…it’s free, semi-tileable stone textures.
The stone seems to be lacking depth, it would take a little time spent with custom UVW’s and mesh prep to get the displacement working correctly, but it is probably the best option for that type of stone. If you are going to go to that effort, you might want to find a few more maps of that type, as has already been suggested. If you can find a good image, even if it is the wrong color, you can use Photoshop’s Match Color image adjustment to match it to another image that has the colors that you want, it usually works really well on stone textures.
On another note, the seasonal variety in the “greenery” colors are a bit too varied for my taste. Also, the largest area of stone on the front seems to be having some shading issues.
I like the lighting and model as well as the rest of the building textures, even the amount of entourage seems to fill the image well. Just a few tweaks holding it back from the next level 
Stone
We use that large river rock often. I am not even sure if it is natural or man made. Any way… I would a good texture site.
Hey all, I can finally contribute to the forum…
http://www.eldoradostone.com/flashsite/main.html
I use these quite a bit.. Go to the “Installation” tab at the top and then “seamless textures” to download them all…
Not sure how to do the displacement/bump mapping with them - but I am sure that someone in here can help out with that. Also, I think that with a little Photoshoping, you can easily make alpha maps from these for the displacements..
stone
That is actually the site that I got the round rock from… good textures.
numan! I thought I could help…
What about this stone…
I had problems too, this is what I have come up with so far, but I’m still working on getting it better.
Both the attached images are un-edited renders straight from VRay 1.5
Basically I use textures that I have made myself, and displacement. I am working on better textures and other stone types as this is rather “dry stone wall” type. My stone to go on the houses has not been so successful.
If this looks interesting and some thing you might find useful, I’ll put more info on request.
Cheers,
EDIT…
I just took a look at your “displacement map” and I think that is your problem! As far as I have ever understood it displacement works just like bump, but makes geometry at render time. That menas that the displacement map should be a greyscale image with Black as the darkest and white as the lightest, idealy. This means that Black will not be displaced, and white will be displaced maximum. In the texture that you have you would expect that between the stones you would have black on your displacement map, and white in the centre of the stone. You should get a map that looks a bit like the last image attachet to this message. Your displacement map is all grey and therefore will not displace very well, and on top of this, the darkest areas are not in the gaps! I suggest making a ew displacement map something like the one attached.
I hope this helps
Have you tried crazybump? If not then I would recommend looking it up, especially for it’s displacement map ability. It will create, in most cases, a proper bump map out of any image that you put into it, with the ability to preview it in realtime and make adjustments to the settings as necessary.
I have only done a few tests with it, but the displacement maps that came out of it were in most cases as good as the ones that came with my texture collections. Even if you make your own displacement maps this tool can save you a lot of time up front.
It is in beta right now, and is free, so it wouldn’t hurt to try it out 
Crazy Bump
I actually used crazy bump… I am not sure I understand the normal maps. How did you accomplish the smooth gradient? When I do the ame in PS it isn’t as smooth. Thanks for the help.
your money well spent on http://www.arroway.de/textures/05/en/index.html
Stone
The one I want is 59.00 EUR and the American dollar is pretty weak right now so it is round $90.00. Is it worth it?
Normal Maps…
I don’t want to hijack your thread here, but I would actually like to know if and how you can use Normal maps with v-ray?
Unless I am much mistaken, it would mean that you wouldn’t need to use displacement?
Also:
I don’t know if you were talking to me when you said that you don’t know how someone achieved the smooth gradient… if you meant with the file “New displacement map”, I just used photoshop… copied the red channel I think (the one that has most contrast) to a layer and then changed the contrast of it so that there were blacks and whites.
Can you let me know if that displacement worked?
I’d love to see another render if you have achieved any improvements.
Try the combination of different blur types in PS, for example surface, and smart blur can be a good start to get rid of the small frequency detail, so you can generate a smooth base for your displacement (which you can tweak with bumpmaps) Also, the curves function is a very useful one. Most of the time, you get linear gradients, (from blurs you almost get linear) so if you want to modify the slope and shape along rock edges, a curves adjustment is most useful.
And about the arroway textures, well… wow… rocks is out at last?! Sweeeet. I think I’ll order it right away. From arroway, you get top notch, quality, insane highres stuff with actual, well worked specular and bump maps (not just a grayscale copy of the rgb image… sigh…) for a very, very reasonable price. Also, you can use their "low"res samples for free.
best regards,
A.