Proceedural Sand Shader - Arnold for Maya

This is a good study example for artists to pick up some procedural shading techniques.

This shader is made entirely without the use of imported or painted maps. Instead, all maps are generated inside the shader using Maya and Arnold Nodes. Benefits of this include:

• Infinitely scalable, never repeating, seamless maps.
• Can be applied to any and all geometry which can then be modified as desired with no need to repaint UV's.
• Quickly iterate through changes and modifications without leaving Maya.
• Easy transfer between Projects and Workstations.

Ensure that your mesh Scale Transforms are frozen as the shader will adapt accordingly.

This shader makes heavy use of displacement. As such,  I suggest you make use of Arnold's subdivision at render time settings and set your subdivision to about 7 depending on how heavy your base mesh is. This can be done manually one mesh at a time or automatically for all selected mesh using this free tool: https://www.artstation.com/yokairising/store/00qv/multi-rendertime-subdivide-arnold-for-maya

Slight modification to SSS.

New "Distant" Example render.