How I make a Sand Material look like Journey

Hi, I have following problem I want a material same as in The Journey. I am totally beginner dont achieve the effect like the photo below. When this is done, I want surfwaves like in Journey but i think this is another topic and it is not so important.

I would be happy when somebody tell me how I make this to look similiar to Journey.

http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/screenshots/Journey/Desert_2P_Sand_Ridges.jpg

Try vehicle example to get a good desert example to start, then try the stylized demos to figured out how to make this desert looks like journey.

my biggest problem is the specular map, i dont now how to make the grain of sand reflect.

My biggest problem is the reflection of grain of sand. i dont know how do this. i try out many things but nothings works for me

Are you already modifing the desert example? can i take a look of your progress. You can archive the reflection in many ways, i suggest you to read this: Physically Based Materials in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.1 Documentation (Take a look of the Roughness property) I working on a similar proyect(involver a desert) and its inspired in journey and other games.

thank you for the post, i googled for the desert example which example did you mean. Can you send me please the link. I created a own desert material and a tryed with a noise texture as specular but the result is not very satisfied.

14630-1.png

The desert example is on the marketplace, its the racing game example. Du i have been researching this and you know what, this thing is not that ez to do, they create a new heightmap just to render the small crystals that reflect the light and create the cool effect. In other words they render 1000 small crystals for every scene, so maybe particles or another method to try to hack this is needed, maybe if some people from staff can gave us some light

ThatGameCompany posted some information on their sand shader/setup here: thatgamecompany

As you can read there, it was a feat of many months of work and very hard to pull off.
If you are a beginner without any prior knowledge I would assume it is currently way out of your league and should settle for the basics first. Since something like this is mostly aesthetic and doesnt involve gameplay (unless you assume to use it as part of gameplay) coming back later and improving it is what I would do.