I'm trying to figure out a straightforward way to render a 3d rock bed like the image shown, i have created one by placing groups of rocks but it still takes a long time. any help would be great, thank you.
@brody98 what Jonathan said, or go find a nice riverrock texture with a bump map already made for you 🙂. Lots of PBR textures can be found on the web which will suit your purpose.
Note the geometry highlighted in orange and what a bump map does to create the illusion of geometry, even the shadow from the cylinder falls on the created texture. Final Renderworks necessary with all the good settings turned on, texture with displacement and self shadowing turned on too.